Editors-in-Chief
Sumita Bhaduri-McIntosh
Biography
Sumita Bhaduri-McIntosh is a physician-scientist, Professor of Pediatrics, and former Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Florida. Dr. Bhaduri-McIntosh is also the Director of Pediatric Infectious Disease Research and a graduate faculty member in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology and the Department of Physics. She completed her medical training at B.J. Medical College in Pune, India, and earned a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Hahnemann University (now Drexel University), where she studied mitochondrial function in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. After completing a pediatric residency, Dr. Bhaduri-McIntosh undertook a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Yale University, where she also trained as a virologist and human immunologist under the mentorship of Professor I. George Miller.
She began her independent research program as an Assistant Professor at Yale and later became a tenured Associate Professor at Stony Brook University in New York. Currently, she is a tenured Professor and Children’s Miracle Network Scholar in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Florida.
Dr. Bhaduri-McIntosh’s research bridges virology, oncology, immunology, and infectious diseases, focusing on the interactions between the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and its host, the B cell. Her laboratory investigates three main areas: 1) mechanisms that regulate EBV susceptibility to lytic activation, which is important for viral persistence and oncolytic therapy development, 2) factors controlling the transition from viral gene transcription to replication in the lytic phase, and 3) how EBV evades anti-pathogen and anti-cancer defenses to promote B cell proliferation and transformation. Her research aims to develop targeted therapeutic approaches that exploit the complex interplay between viral reactivation, immune evasion, and B cell transformation in EBV-driven cancers.
Dominique Soldati-Favre
Biography
Dominique Soldati-Favre is Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She received her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Zurich and subsequently trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. She established her independent research career at the University of Heidelberg, where she was Assistant Professor before joining Imperial College London as Senior Lecturer and Reader.
Her laboratory studies the cell biology and molecular mechanisms of apicomplexan parasites, with a particular focus on Toxoplasma gondii. Her research investigates how these parasites organize their cytoskeleton and apical complex to achieve motility and host-cell invasion, as well as how they build and maintain essential organelles and metabolic pathways. Her group combines molecular genetics, advanced imaging, proteomics, biochemistry and structural biology to uncover fundamental mechanisms governing parasite development, host-cell invasion and survival.
Dr. Soldati-Favre is EMBO member, and elected to the European Academy of Microbiology, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences. She has received the Nessim-Habif World Prize in 2025, the Alice and C.C. Wang Award in Molecular Parasitology in 2019 and the Cloëtta Foundation Award in 2015.