Faculty Directory

Christina A. Rostad, MD

Christina A. Rostad, MD headshot

Assistant Professor
Division of Infectious Diseases
Department of Pediatrics
Emory University School of Medicine

Co-investigator in the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU)

EMAIL: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
PHONE: 404-727-2472

PubMed

Biography

Dr. Christina A. Rostad is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and an Attending Physician in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She performed her undergraduate studies in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, and she completed her medical degree, residency, and fellowship training at Emory University School of Medicine. In 2016, she joined the faculty at Emory University after receiving an Atlanta Pediatric Scholars award sponsored by The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Emory+Children’s Pediatric Institute.

Research

Dr. Rostad’s research interests focus on vaccine design and development, from pre-clinical design and testing to clinical trials. She has a translational laboratory, which studies serologic immunity to pediatric pathogens, including RSV and SARS-CoV-2. She is currently a co-investigator in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-contracted Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Unit (VTEU) at Emory University School of Medicine and has served as an investigator on multiple VTEU and industry-sponsored clinical trials, including the Moderna mRNA-1273 phase 1 and 3 trials and the Janssen Ad26.COV2.S phase 3 trial for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Dr. Rostad has worked collaboratively to enroll children hospitalized at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta with acute COVID-19 and its associated multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) to biobank clinical specimens for shared and collaborative research efforts to further our understanding of these disease processes in children. Currently, she serves as the Emory site Principle Investigator of the CDC MIS-C Phenotype Initiative, the RADx-rad PreVAIL study, and the DMID 21-0012 Mix-and-match study for heterologous SARS-CoV-2 booster vaccinations. The fundamental goal of her work is to develop vaccines that will prevent infectious diseases and protect the health and wellbeing of children. 

Education

  • Fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine, 2013-2016
  • Residency in Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, 2010-2013
  • M.D. with High Honors, Emory University School of Medicine, 2006-2010
  • B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with Highest Honors, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-2005

Research Center(s)