Dr. Lu has extensive preclinical and clinical experience in the development of live attenuated vaccines, including advancing six vaccine candidates into clinical trials. Dr. Lu joined Vivaldi in 2008 as Director of Virology, and subsequently was promoted to Senior Director of Research & Development. He was appointed Vice President, Research & Development in 2011. Dr. Lu leads Vivaldi's LAIV program, including development and evaluation of vaccine candidates in animal models to establish preclinical safety and efficacy, and implementation of cGMP and regulatory CMC strategies in support of the company's planned IND. Prior to joining Vivaldi, Dr. Lu held positions of increasing responsibility at MedImmune, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca PLC, where he contributed significantly to advances in genetic modification, development and propagation of LAIV strains for seasonal and pandemic influenza, and performed plasmid rescue and reverse genetics for the only commercial product for which this process is used (FluMist®). Through a MedImmune-NIH CRADA program, Dr. Lu led the preclinical project teams that successfully filed six INDs for MedImmune's pandemic LAIV candidates. Dr. Lu has authored over twenty peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on six US patents related to development and production of vaccines for influenza and other serious viral respiratory diseases. Dr. Lu earned a BSc degree in Biology at Lanzhou University, a MSc degree in Biochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD degree in Virology at the University of Maryland. He performed his postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco.