Dear all,
on Thursday, 27th of June, 3pm, Dr. Julia Rebecca Port, Dept. of Viral Immunology (VIRI), HZI - Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung GmbH will hold a talk at TWINCORE.
The talk will be in seminar room 0.020 or via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83927885038
Meeting ID: 83927885038
Password: 810364
Short CV:
Julia Rebecca Port is a Young Investigator at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in the Virus Immunology Department. She is the lead of the Laboratory of Transmission Immunology (LOTI). The research of the LOTI group focuses on the new frontiers of transmission immunology, particularly the impact of mucosal immune responses on airborne routes of viral transmission. The lab’s goal is to gain an in-depth understanding of the responses needed to minimize the transmission window of respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 so we can inform the development of targeted transmission mitigation strategies.
Julia’s long-term goal is to understand how immunity restricts the transmission window for human pathogenic viruses. She completed my B.Sc. in Molecular Medicine at the University of Tübingen, Germany (2014) and conducted research at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Then she obtained a M.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium (2016). Julia conducted her doctoral research at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (2019, University of Lübeck, Germany). While there, she developed a holistic approach combining computational tools, immunological assays, and a mouse model. This allowed a comprehensive study on how T-cell homing to the gut is related to poor outcomes in Lassa fever patients. Julia’s post-doctoral projects at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH, USA, focused on immune responses to highly pathogenic virus infections. She spearheaded experimental projects that addressed pressing public health needs encompassing, but not limited to, novel animal model designs bridging immunology with aerobiology and environmental virology. This led to the first description of the immunopathology after aerosol infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the Syrian hamster, the first experimental proof of fine aerosol transmission of the virus, and evidence for pre-existing immunity-derived transmission competitiveness.