Carolina B. Lopez

Washington University in St. Louis, USA

I  am the Theodore and Bertha Bryan Professor of Environmental Medicine and BJC Investigator in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. I am a mother of two now adult boys. I arrived in the United States in 1996 after obtaining a professional title of Biochemist and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile. I received a Ph.D. from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NY working in the laboratory of Thomas Moran (1997-2002), and continued in the same laboratory for a postdoctoral position. At the Moran lab, I investigated how dendritic cells get activated in response to infection with influenza  and parainfluenza viruses and studied the impact of type I interferons on the immune response to viral infection.  I was promoted to Research Assistant Professor in 2005. I joined the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for my first independent position in September of 2010, and was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in May of 2016. I joined Washington University as Professor and BJC Investigator in June of 2020.

I've been an active member of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), where I gave the Immunology to Viruses lecture in the International AAI Introductory Course in Immunology (2012-2013), served as member of the Committee on the Status of Women (2012-2015), and was a member of the Program Committee (2017-2020). I'm a member of the American Society for Virology (ASV) and of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) where I was on the Council on Microbial Sciences (2017-2020) and chaired Division E (Immunology). I'm member of the NIH CSR VIRB study section,  Section Editor of PloS Pathogens, Associate Editor of Science Advances and Editor of mBio. l am a Fellow of the Professional Mentoring Skills Enhancing Diversity (PROMISED) Program funded by the NIH-National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), a Penn Fellow (2017-18), a Fulbright US Scholar (2018-2019) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2022).