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Nicole (Nikki) Gudleski O'Regan, PhD, spent the last 15 years working with the world's leading pharmaceutical companies to publish findings from their clinical trials and educate healthcare professionals and patients on the latest medical advances. During this time, Nikki specialized in infectious diseases, currently working with Inizio Medical as Senior Vice President for Vaccines. Nikki used her extensive experience in the vaccine space during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she worked closely with international experts to drive the publication of pivotal data for Moderna and Pfizer's mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and translated these data into formats medical professionals and patients can use and understand; these data were essential in the expedited approval of these vaccines by the US FDA. Nikki continues to support vaccine publications and other medical content for variant booster and combination COVID-19 vaccines, as well as vaccines for other pathogens of pandemic potential.

Nikki's love of science was ignited while at North Schuylkill Jr/Sr High School during 10th grade biology in Ms. Sugrue's class. After graduating from North Schuylkill in 2001, she pursued a science career at Shippensburg University where she finished summa cum laude in 2005 with a BS in Biology and a secondary education certification.

While at Shippensburg, Nikki's scientific research focused on the epidemiology of Borrelia Burgdorferi (the causative agent of Lyme disease) using ticks from hunter-killed deer in northeast Pennsylvania. After graduating from Shippensburg, Nikki completed her PhD in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, where she studied the mechanistic aspects of viral particle assembly of retroviruses, including HIV. Nikki's research culminated in 4 publications in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of Virology (2), and Journal of Molecular Biology.

Following her graduate studies, Nikki completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, examining virus-host interactions of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), the most common infectious cause of birth defects and serious infections in those with a weakened immune system. In less than 2 years, Nikki developed a novel system to study large-scale surface protein expression in HCMV-infected cells, with the goal to develop targeted therapies to altered cellular proteins. The applicability of this work to a variety of disease states has led to a publication in Cell-host and Microbe and a patent application for the system. Nikki was also a recipient of National Science Foundation and American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowships, where her research proposal scored in the top 1 percent in the country.

Nikki currently resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband Kevin, 4 wonderful children (Ben, Lily, Maty, and Lucy), and their basset hound Daisy. Using all she learned as a Lady Spartan, Nikki spends her free time coaching Upper Moreland Bears youth basketball, serves on the local team's board as an advocate for women's sports, and volunteers regularly as a coach at the Upper Moreland Little League. When not coaching, you can always hear Nikki cheering loudly from the sideline!