Anne de Groot, MD
CEO/CSO EpiVax Inc.
Professor, Senior Scientist at University of Georgia Center for Vaccines & Immunology

Anne (Annie) Searls De Groot is a graduate of Smith College and University of Chicago, where she obtained her BA and MD respectively. After medical school, she completed her residency in internal medicine at Tufts New England Medical Center, and then participated in a research fellowship in vaccinology at the NIH, and a second fellowship in infectious disease back at the New England Medical Center. Having become an Infectious Disease specialist and obtained her first NIH Grant, she joined the medical and research faculty at Brown University. She started EpiVax while still a faculty member at Brown and gradually shifted her effort from primarily academic research at Brown to translational research at EpiVax. She retains an active academic presence, most recently at the University of Georgia, Center for Vaccines and Immunology, where she is currently professor and senior scientist at the University of Georgia, collaborating with researchers and training the next generation of vaccinologists. 

Annie has served as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of the biotech company EpiVax, which she cofounded with Bill Martin, COO/CIO, for the past 22 years. This company is privately held, employs approximately 30 high-level research scientists, and is a globally recognized immunoinformatics and vaccine design company. One of the company’s more fundamental discoveries was that human pathogens use “human-like” sequences to camouflage themselves from immune response, and that removing these sequences from vaccines makes them more effective. The EpiVax team also discovered what are now known as “Tregitopes”—peptides that activate natural regulatory T cells. 

De Groot is the author of more than 240 publications and 50 patents, and has generated more than $35M in US federal funding. In addition to her research, Dr. De Groot continues to work to improve access to healthcare by volunteering evenings and weekends at Clinica Esperanza/Hope Clinic, which provides free medical care and preventive health services to uninsured adults living in Rhode Island. De Groot is also the founder and scientific director of the GAIA Vaccine Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the health of women, children and families in Mali, West Africa.