The Catholic University of American said that biology professor Venigalla Rao was recognized by the American Society for Microbiology in its profiles of public health officials battling COVID-19.

Rao was featured during National Public Health Week with five other public health professionals who are working to fight the coronavirus, The Catholic University of America said. 

Rao is with the Catholic University’s Center for Advanced Training in Cell and Molecular Biology.

For more than 30 years, Rao has specialized in his field and also has studied the development of vaccines for diseases similar to COVID-19.

“Our research is quite broad — in the sense that we collaborate with structural biologists, immunologists and biophysicists — as we try to understand the molecular mechanisms of assembly and genome packaging by bacteriophage T4 and translate some of the basic knowledge to biomedical applications, such as vaccine design and gene therapy,” Rao told The Catholic University. “We hope to generate useful vaccine candidates in the near future to address this very serious coronavirus crisis.”