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Assistant Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
I completed medical school at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, in 2013 and received my research-based MD degree in 2015. In parallel to my medical education, I obatained an MSc degree in Experimental Medicine at the University of Wurzburg (completed in 2014). Thereafter, I served as a sub-investigator in clinical trials focusing on the prophylaxis and treatment of opportunistic infections in patients with hematological malignancies and received postdoctoral training in experimental mycology and microbial immunology at the University Hospital of Wurzburg. From 2015 until 2017, I was leading a project at the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research Wurzburg that aimed to dissect the immune-pathogenesis of mucormycosis and develop improved immunoassays of mold exposure and infection. In 2018, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Kontoyiannis at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to continue my postdoctoral training in his leading and distinguished mycological research group. In 2020, I received a research faculty position (Instructor) in MD Anderson’s Department of Infectious Diseases and have been promoted to Assistant Professor in September 2021. My primary research interests are the immunopathology and immunotherapy of fungal infections and mixed inter-kingdom infections, innovative mammalian models and mini-host models of invasive mycoses, and translational research as it relates to the diagnosis and treatment of fungal infections. As part of these studies, I have driven collaborative efforts to establish exciting technological advances in experimental mycology such as the adaptation of IncuCyte NeuroTrack imaging for mycological studies, the development of whole blood-based immunoassays, and the establishment of a high-throughput larval zebrafish infection model to dissect host-pathogen interplay at living epithelia.