Irene Kasumba, Ph.D.

Most recently, Irene was a patent agent at another global law firm. Prior to that, Irene was a research associate in Professor Sharon Tennant’s lab at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Vaccine Development, where she advanced studies to understand the impact of vaccines on enteric disease transmission dynamics. Irene was also a research and alliances officer at the New Ventures Office where she fostered research partnerships for commercialization of the University’s IP assets.

With more than 10 years of academic research experience, Irene has investigated the molecular mechanisms of host pathogen interactions and transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. Irene earned her Ph.D. under Professor Dave Severson at the University of Notre Dame where she applied differential transcriptomic assays to explore the molecular mechanisms of dengue-2 infection in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

Irene completed her postdoctoral training under Dr. Patricia Rosa at the NIAID/NIH facility in Montana, where she identified molecular cues required for bacterial infectivity in the rodent and tick cycle and contributed to the development of genetic tools for functional studies of Borrelia burgdorferi.

Irene gained valuable skills in disease transmission dynamics and immunopathology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Irene got her start in the United States conducting molecular research using Tsetse fly models in Dr. Serap Aksoy’s laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.