Chair | Department of Microbiology                                                                            Mount Sinai Endowed Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases                  Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is currently a Professor with tenure and the Chair of the Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, NY, USA. Her research focuses on the modulation of innate immunity by viruses of human health interests, such as dengue (DENV), influenza (IAV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Zika (ZIKV), and SARS-CoV-2. Her group uses mainly primary human systems, such as dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages as well as primary lung epithelial cells and human tonsils for these studies combining molecular and immunological techniques. Her studies aim to understand the mechanisms of immune evasion used by these viruses to establish infection in humans. She currently participates in several multi-investigator projects on DENV, IAV and SARS-CoV-2 that use OMICS technologies to study immune responses to infection and vaccination.  She has also participated in several study sections for the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIAD), the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) and served in the Scientific Council of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) at NIH/NIAID from 2018-2022. Dr. Fernandez-Sesma chaired the NIAID Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) Steering Committee from 2018-2022. She is strongly committed to graduate education and mentoring. She co-directed the Microbiology Main Training Area of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at ISMMS from 2010 to 2020. She has co-authored numerous publications in Virology and Immunology journals and served on the editorial board of Journal of Virology, mSphere and PLoS Pathogens. Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a recipient of the Jacobi Medallion from ISMMS and Honorary Alumni of the University of Salamanca, in Spain among other notable recognitions. Dr. Fernandez-Sesma has co-organized the 2023 and 2025 Gordon Research Conference: Viruses and Cells and delivered the Keynote lecture at the 2023 Annual Meeting for the American Society of Virology.

Dr. Fernandez-Sesma’s laboratory has received funding from the NIH and the DoD. Her lab is also funded by Viral Immunity and Vaccination (VIVA) as part of the HIPC with Viviana Simon as Co-PI and a top-notch group of investigators from ISMMS and from other institutions in which they will investigate the innate immune responses in humans after SARS-CoV2, influenza or dengue vaccines using OMICs technologies. Additionally, she participated in one of the recently awarded NIAID multi-investigator contracts, AViDD (Nevan Krogan, PI) aimed to test the efficacy of selected antiviral drugs against different viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, DENV, CHIKV and others. She was ranked on the top 6 NIH funded Investigator (PI) in Microbiology in the US by Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research (BRIMR) from 2025-2020. http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2020/default.htm