Dr. Christina Spiropoulou has been awarded the ISAR 2022 women in science award
The ISAR major awards are one of the highlights of every ICAR. Hybrid 2022 ICAR Seattle will not be an exception, with an outstanding roster of major awardees giving their keynote lectures in Seattle next March.
Starting on 2017, ISAR has instituted two new major awards to recognize, support and encourage groups of people who have been seriously under-represented in STEM and who thus have had to overcome bigger hurdles to succeed, women and ethnical, cultural, or gender minorities. The ultimate goal of these awards is to lower the barriers for all groups of people to have a successful career in antiviral discovery, research, and development raising the diversity in antiviral discovery, research, and development.
The Award of Excellence, to women scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field of antiviral, was first granted in 2017, to Dr. Priscilla Yang, who is now also this year’s William Prusoff Memorial Awardee. The Women in Science (WIS) award consists of USD$3,000, plus travel and lodging expenses, and the associated administrative costs. The WIS Award Committee receives nominations from the ISAR membership or may itself nominate five female candidates for keynote speakers for consideration by the ICAR Program Committee at the ensuing annual ICAR meeting. The WIS Committee ranks the nominated candidates based on scientific prominence and leadership in their respective scientific area, as evidenced by peer recognition and productivity including the number and quality of publications and presentations at national/international meetings. Leadership in mentoring young women scientists is considered favorable but it is not required, although the awardee is expected to then play a leading role in mentoring women in science.
The list of past awardees includes prominent antiviral researchers such as Dr. Graciela Andre, Desiree LaBeaud, Grace Zhou, and Anna Wald. ISAR, including the WIS and ICAR program committees, proudly announces the 2022 WIS awardee who will join this cadre of past awardees, Dr. Christina Spiropoulou.
Christina Spiropoulou is a virologist with an extensive background in basic and translational research applied to the development of medical countermeasures for hemorrhagic fever viruses. She currently serves as the Deputy Chief of the Viral Special Pathogens Branch at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and is the lead scientist for the Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapeutics Team. For the past 29 years, her research interests have focused on hemorrhagic fever viruses, a diverse group of zoonotic RNA viruses that includes Ebola, Lassa, Nipah, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Rift Valley fever, and tick-borne encephalitis viruses. During her tenure at CDC, she participated in the discovery of the pathogenic New World hantaviruses and has been deployed to several VHF outbreaks. Her team’s current projects focus on scientific questions with the potential to lead to development of prototype vaccines and identification of targets for antivirals or immunotherapeutics against this very important group of viruses.
Please join us in congratulating Dr Spiropoulou and register now to be present at her keynote talk in Seattle, coming March 21-25
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January 07, 2022