Sophie-Marie Aicher

I did my B.Sc. in Molecular Biotechnology at Technical University Munich including a voluntary 4th year that I spent at UBC/Vancouver in the lab of Prof. François Jean working on flaviviruses. I moved on to do a M.Sc in Virology at Imperial College London and did my thesis at the Pirbright Institute with Dr. Chris Netherton and Prof. Pippa Hawes working on African Swine Fever. I then did a 1 year research internship at the University of São Paulo in the laboratory of Prof. Edison Durigon to work on a arbovirus surveillance project in migratory birds. I then moved to Paris to do my PhD originally continuing the Brazil project and identify IFN signalling pathways in birds upon flavivirus infection at Institut Pasteur Paris. With the onset of pandemic, I changed my research focus but stayed with reservoirs and zoonotic viruses, so I then studied bats and coronaviruses. Finally, I moved for my PostDoc to the University of Toronto and am co-supervised by Dr. Samira Mubareka and Dr. Arinjay Banerjee to study host immune responses in wildlife reservoir species to emerging zoonotic viruses.