Dr. Oldfield completed her B.S. in biology at the University of Akron and her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Dr. Graham Hatfull, studying the gene expression profile, promoter sequence determinants, and temperate genetic switch in mycobacteriophages, which are viruses that infect mycobacterial species, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Dr. Oldfield joined the J. Craig Venter Institute in 2014 and worked with Dr. Sanjay Vashee to establish a novel reverse genetic system for large double-stranded DNA viruses, specifically herpesviruses, using synthetic genomic tools. The Vashee group, in collaboration with the group of Dr. Prashant Desai at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, cloned overlapping fragments, which span the entirety of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) genome and which can be modified in parallel. Complete virus genomes are assembled in yeast from wild-type and/or modified fragments that are “mixed and matched” to rapidly generate combinatorial mutants. This technology can be used to speed the development of herpesvirus-based therapeutics, such as oncolytic viruses, and hopefully lead to more effective treatments. Combining comparative genomics with synthetic genomics assembly of virus genomes will improve our understanding of the genetic determinants of virulence and cell tropism in large dsDNA viruses.