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Assistant Professor
Yale School of Medicine
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Heidi Zapata, MD, PhD, is an Infectious Disease physician and Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Medicine. She was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her mother and her left Nicaragua and left because of the political strife associated with the civil war. She grew up in Queens NYC and went to public schools, including Queens College for her undergraduate studies where she earned a merit based full tuition scholarship. She went on to do an MD, PhD at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. She trained in the laboratory of Jennifer Moffat, PhD for her PhD in Microbiology/Immunology. Her thesis work focused on the host-pathogen interactions of Varicella Zoster virus—the cause of Chicken Pox and shingles. Her work demonstrated that Varicella Zoster virus replication was dependent on the MAPK signaling pathways, JNK and ERK –further illustrated when her work found that the virion had hijacked these cellular proteins into the virion. Her research interests inspired her to pursue Infectious Diseases as a specialty. She did her Internal Medicine residency at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA and went on to pursue her Infectious Disease training at the Yale School of Medicine. During fellowship her clinical experiences repeatedly showed her that different human hosts respond quite differently to infections—something that the COVID-19 pandemic has also strikingly demonstrated. Her research focuses on understanding the innate immune response and how it is influenced by Aging, HIV-infection, and co-morbidities such as obesity and Diabetes.