**About the Special Issue Editor**

**Catherine Adamson** is a Principal Investigator and Lecturer in the School of Biology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, U.K. Before her appointment at St. Andrews, Dr. Adamson spent six years as international research fellow at the NIH in the United States. Catherine's laboratory focuses on virology with a specific interest in antiviral drugs. Her internationally recognized work encompasses multiple important aspects of the drug discovery process including innovative cell-based assay design, development, and optimization; execution of industry-standard high-throughput screens to discover antiviral compounds against novel viral targets; hit antiviral compound validation and characterization; determination of lead compound mechanism-of-action, antiviral activity, evolution of drug resistance, and understanding performance in clinical trials; and using antiviral compounds as chemical tools to provide new fundamental knowledge in virology to drive further drug discovery. More specifically, Dr. Adamson's work has focused on HIV-1 maturation inhibitors, a new class of antiretroviral compounds with a novel mechanism of action. A second major research interest is targeting viral interferon antagonists; her laboratory has developed an industry-standard modular cell-based screening platform to target a viral interferon antagonist of choice. The Adamson laboratory has successfully used the screening platform to discover novel compounds that specifically inhibit the interferon antagonist activity of the human respiratory syncytial virus NS2 protein. Dr. Adamson is also involved in a collaborative project that has identified compounds with potent antiviral activity against human cytomegalovirus, which block major immediate early gene transcription.
