This week in virology, the podcast about viruses, the kind that make you sick.

From microbe TV, this is TWIV, this week in virology, a special episode recorded on June 1st, 2023.

I'm Vincent Racken Yellow, and you're listening to the podcast all about viruses.

My guest today is formerly the lab head and head of lab of methods development and associate

director of research in the office of vaccines and research and review at the FDA and also adjunct

professor university of Maryland and George Washington University, Coistgett, Jumacoff. Welcome

to TWIV. Yeah, thank you, Vincent. A lot of titles. Well, you got to donate over your life.

You were last on TWIV 604. I don't know if you remember the beginning of the pandemic.

You were trying to get OPV tried as a temporary way of preventing COVID, right?

Yes, yes, talked about that. You never got a trial done, all right?

No, not really. I mean, it's raised so many objections and all the polio eradication

people were up in arms and just said, no, no, no, no, no.

Yes, so it was a kind of quite, it was upsetting, but I can't understand, you know.

So you just retired from the FDA. So, in last week, we had a symposium in your honor,

which was very nice. And I wanted to talk about your life, not that it's over anything,

but it's a good time to review it. So let's start all the way in the beginning,

because you were born in USSR, right? What year was that? Roughly?

Yeah, well, it was 1952. And I was born in a family of two virologists. My father was Mikhail

Jumacoff. And my mother was Marina Vershulva. They were both virologists, neurovariologists,

mostly studying neuroinfections. Actually, my father was, became famous when he was a

co-discover of tick-borne encephalitis in 1937. There was a live zilber who was the kind of more senior

Soviet virologists who headed this expedition. So my father participated in it, and he actually got

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