Dr. Mark R. Schleiss, Professor of Pediatrics, holds the American Legion and Auxiliary Endowed Chair at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School. Dr. Schleiss has been actively researching the pathogenesis and immunobiology of congenital CMV (cCMV) infections since the mid-1980s. He has been an international leader in the study of cCMV clinical management, pathogenesis, and sequelae. As a practicing clinician, he also provides expertise in the evaluation and management of cCMV. He has also studied antiviral therapy strategies, targeting both the pregnant patient and the newborn infant. One major focus of his research laboratory is the study of vaccines for prevention of cCMV, and he has carried out NIH-funded studies, both pre-clinical (animal) model studies as well as clinical trials of vaccines in human subjects. A second major area of his research is newborn screening for cCMV. His laboratory demonstrated improved methodology for detection of cCMV in the newborn dried blood spot (DBS). In parallel, his advocacy efforts for universal CMV screening with the state legislature led to successful passage in 2021 of the “Vivian Act”, a bill that made Minnesota the first state in the USA to test all newborns for cCMV in 2023. He is also the principal investigator of a CDC-funded MAT-LINK site in Minnesota that is currently engaged in cCMV surveillance and follow-up (https://ctsi.umn.edu/news/ctsi-part-team-studying-follow-infants-cmv-infections).