Dr. Fernández-Sesma is a Professor of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). Her group studies the modulation of innate immunity by viruses of human health interests, such as dengue (DENV), influenza (IAV), and others using primary human systems, such as dendritic cells, macrophages and tonsils. Dr. Fernández-Sesma obtained her MS in Biological Sciences from the University of Salamanca, Spain in 1990 and her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at ISMMS in 1998. She currently participates in several multi-investigator projects that use OMICS technologies to study immune responses to viral infections. She is also very committed to graduate education and mentoring. She is the co-director of the Microbiology Main Training Area (MTA) of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at ISMMS since 2010. She has co-authored over 75 publications and is on the editorial board of several journals, such as Journal of Virology, PLoS Pathogens and mSphere among others. She has participated in several study sections for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Defense (DoD) and is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology of the NIH/NIAID.
Dr. Fernández-Sesma’s laboratory has received funding from the NIH and the DoD; and for the past 4 years she has been ranked on the top 5 and the top female NIH-funded Investigator in Microbiology in the US by The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research (BRIMR) http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2018/NIH_Awards_2018.htm
She is currently the lead-investigator of the Dengue Human Immunology Project Consortium (DHIPC), which is one of the 9 NIH/NIAID-funded HIPC consortia (https://www.immuneprofiling.org/hipc/page/showPage?pg=projects) that investigates the human innate immune responses to DENV in infected and DENV vaccinated individuals. Data from these studies is crucial to understand the early events that shape the innate and adaptive immune responses to DENV infections and vaccinations. The project has also been expanded to study human immune responses to chikungunya (CHIKV) and Zika (ZIKV) viruses.
Important Links:
Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS82J0wJ6fA
Dr. Fernandez-Sesma videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEvmMr20k3E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm94cqdiqyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkbo8HO6Y1k
Collaborators:
Garcia-Sastre Lab: http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/labs/garcia-sastre-laboratory
Simon Lab: https://labs.icahn.mssm.edu/simonlab
Gamarnik Lab: http://www.leloir.org.ar/gamarnik/