Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School; Associate Pathologist, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Director, Microbiology Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Branda received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 2000. He completed residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), followed by a fellowship in Clinical Microbiology. He joined the MGH Pathology faculty in 2004, and is currently Associate Director of the Microbiology Laboratories. He is director of the HMS Clinical Clerkship in Anatomic Pathology and Laboratory Medicine program at Mass General Hospital, and is Associate Director of the MGH Residency Training Program .  His research interests include improving patient care through the development of new diagnostic testing strategies, and optimizing utilization of laboratory testing and antimicrobial agents.  He has a special interest in diagnostic testing for tick-borne illnesses, such as borreliosis, babesiosis, anaplasmosis and tularemia. In 2015, Dr. Branda received a Bay Area Lyme Foundation Emerging Leader Award. His recent research has focused on early detection of Lyme disease using Borrelia burgdorferi cell-free DNA in plasma, and the publication is available here.