Dr. Rayner is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases (LID), and Responsible Official for the select agent program at the University of South Alabama. Dr. Rayner received his Ph.D. in Microbiology at Colorado State University (CSU) in 1998 and completed two post-doctoral research programs with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases where he first started working on vaccines development. Dr. Rayner continued this research as a Research Scientist at AlphaVax, Inc., where he was specifically responsible for optimizing a proprietary vaccine platform and developing vaccines targeting an array of infectious diseases and cancer. Upon joining MRIGlobal in 2005, Dr. Rayner received extensive training in Good Laboratory Practice (21 CFR Part 58), ISO 9001, and Program Management; and extended his research interests to include development of therapeutic drugs while serving as Principal Investigator (PI), Program Manager, and Study Director on several large Department of Defense (DoD) contracts as well as numerous commercial contracts. Dr. Rayner joined Southern Research in 2012 as the Director of Infectious Disease Research in the Drug Development Division. Here he served as PI and study director on multiple different contracts with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop and implement animal models and assays to permit preclinical and clinical evaluation of medical interventions against pathogens including but not limited to anthrax, influenza virus and Zika virus. In 2017, Dr. Rayner left private industry to oversee the LID at the University of South Alabama. Since joining the University, Dr. Rayner has utilized his extensive experience in drug discovery and preclinical development to evaluate potentially broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics and vaccine strategies utilizing chikungunya virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Zika virus, influenza virus and most recently severe acute respiratory syncytial virus 2 as model systems. Current research efforts are funded through contracts and grants with small biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies, local and state government agencies, and the DoD.
