Dr. Iwasaki, Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, focuses her work on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces.
Ever since receiving the first of two research grants from WHRY in 2003, Iwasaki’s lab has earned significantly larger funding from the National Institutes of Health for studies that have established groundbreaking insights into the transmission, treatment, and possible prevention of herpes.
Iwasaki hopes to soon have a treatment in clinical trials to benefit the millions of people suffering from this disease, a majority of whom are women. Her other research explores challenges in confronting influenza, rhinovirus, human papillomavirus, and Zika.
Iwasaki joins 31 other faculty members from Yale School of Medicine who have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors available to scientists in the world.
She received her Ph.D. and B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health before joining the Yale faculty in 2000.