Keynote
Sara Gianella Weibel, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, UC San Diego
Sara Gianella Weibel, MD, graduated from the University of Zurich (Switzerland). After her residency in Internal Medicine in Switzerland, she began her fellowship in the Department of Infectious Disease and Hospital Epidemiology of the University Hospital of Zurich in 2007. She moved to UC San Diego in 2009 to work as a postdoctoral fellow, and she joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health) in 2013.
Currently she works both at the UC San Diego Antiviral Research Center, and in her laboratory on the UC San Diego campus, where she oversees bench research. She is interested in applying the latest laboratory techniques and rigorous analytical methods to address some of the most pressing problems in infectious diseases. Her research includes investigating HIV persistence in various tissues and anatomical compartments across the human body. She is interested in understanding the transmission dynamics of HIV in the genital tract and its interactions with co-infecting viruses, especially but not limited to Cytomegalovirus. She is committed in contributing to understand sex and gender differences in HIV pathogenesis and persistence. Finally, she is investigating clinical complications related to persistent immune activation.