Dirk Dittmer is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the director of the UNC Vironomic Core, which supports clinical trials in the United States and globally, and co-director of the UNC Lineberger Global Oncology Program, which addresses growing international disparities in cancer incidence and death. Dittmer earned his PhD in 1994 from Princeton University under the mentorship of Arnold Levine and was the first to describe gain of function hot spot mutations in p53. He completed his postdoctoral studies at Sandford University in virology investigating human cytomegalovirus and Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV). Dittmer’s research group investigates cancers that develop in the context of immunodeficiency and HIV/AIDS. His team was the first to describe KSHV extracellular vehicles and viral miRNAs found at high levels in human plasma. Dittmer studies all fundamental interaction points between viruses and hosts. Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dittmer has been tracking and monitoring changes in the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to identify mutations and track its history.