IIT Seminar | Dr Margarita Dominguez-Villar

Dr Margarita Dominguez-Villar (Imperial College London) will be speaking at the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation Seminar Series on Thursday 03 February.

All are welcome to attend. Please contact Hanh Gurr (h.gurr@ucl.ac.uk) if you would like to join the seminar, or meet the speaker.

About the speaker

Originally from Spain, I graduated in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (University of Granada, Spain) and I obtained my Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Cadiz (Spain) in 2007. The focus of my Ph.D. was the regulation of the mechanisms of peripheral tolerance mediated by Hepatitis C core protein, and in particular, the role of HCV core protein on T cell function and anergy induction.

After a short postdoctoral period at Karolinska Institute (Sweden) under the supervision of Drs. Benedict J. Chambers and Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren, I joined Prof. David Hafler laboratory at Harvard Medical School in January 2009 as a postdoctoral associate to study the biology of human regulatory T cells in health and autoimmune diseases, with a specific focus on multiple sclerosis. In 2010 I moved to Yale University with the rest of Dr. Hafler’s laboratory and in 2015 I was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology (Yale School of Medicine).

Since then, the main research interests of my laboratory are the basic molecular mechanisms of T cell and regulatory T cell function/dysfunction in autoimmune and infectious diseases with a particular focus on multiple sclerosis and viral infection. Furthermore, we are interested in understanding mechanistically how environmental factors affect the generation of these responses (dietary factors, hormones, viral infections, cytokines, etc…). In September 2018 I moved my laboratory to Imperial College London where we continue working on the same research questions.

Further information

• Academic profile: Dr Margarita Dominguez-Villar
• Imperial College London