Jeffrey Harding is a bioinformatician and Project Scientist in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Jeff grew up in Memphis and studied biomedical engineering as an undergraduate. He received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Louisiana State University. During his doctoral research with Professor Stephania Cormier, Jeff focused on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), where he utilized bioinformatics to demonstrate that altered gut microbiota in infants is significantly associated with RSV disease severity.

Following his PhD, Jeff moved to UCLA to focus on human immunology and gene therapy. Working in the laboratories of Professors Scott Kitchen, Anjie Zhen, and Jing Wen, Jeff led data analysis pipelines for CAR T- and CAR stem cell therapies. His work supported the translation of these therapies from preclinical discovery toward clinical trials, including contributions to JCI and Science Translational Medicine publications and advancing projects through the FDA meeting process.

Now in the Herman Lab (HALab), Jeff is leveraging systems immunology and high-performance computing to investigate the complex interactions between the microbiome and the human immune system. He specializes in single-cell RNA sequencing, multi-omics integration, and the development of automated machine learning algorithms to optimize therapeutic design. Altogether, he hopes his data-driven, basic-to-translational approaches can bridge the gap between computational biology and medicine to accelerate the development of next-generation treatments for infectious and immune-mediated diseases.

Contact: jharding@mednet.ucla.edu