Today our President/CEO Rudi H. Ettrich, RNDr, MSc, PhD. had the honor to welcome Dr. Ivana Nemcovicova, Mgr., PhD., as new visiting faculty at our university sponsored by the National Scholarship Program for Research Scholars of the Slovak Republic.
Dr. Nemcovicova earned her PhD in Biophysics at the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic, in 2007, did her first post-doc 2007-2008 at the Vienna Glycobiology Center, Vienna, Austria, and her second 4-year post-doc 2009-2013 with Dirk Zajonc at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, San Diego, California, USA, where she was working on the structure of cytomegalovirus immune modulators and natural brakes of the immune system.
Since her return to Europe in 2014 she is a Marie Curie Fellow and chairs the Department of Viral Immunology at the Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Her current research is focused on strategies that viruses use to escape detection by our immune system, and modification of the chemical structure of viral macromolecules to alter the quality and size of the associated immune response, and possibly eliminate the mechanism by which the microbe evades immunological recognition. These viral molecules, therefore, have a high pharmacological potential in immunomodulatory therapy.
President Ettrich said during his welcome address: “I am excited about the opportunity to have Dr. Nemcovicova here at our University and am looking very much forward to work with her not only for the next few weeks but also to explore future collaborations and consequent student exchange“.
