Irene Ramos-Lopez, PhD

Irene Ramos, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research focuses on the study of immune responses to virus infections, such as the pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), influenza virus, and Zika viruses. Specifically, she is interested in improving our understanding of the innate immune response to virus infection in ex vivo human systems using single-cell technologies, such as single-cell transcriptomics or mass cytometry. She has done extensive work on the evaluation of the effects of several virulence factors of influenza virus in human primary cells. She also evaluated the immunological parameters associated with the protection against leishmaniasis and the progression of the disease, and on the development and evaluation of vaccines against Leishmania in the canine model. Additionally, she actively participated in several studies testing immune responses to influenza vaccines in immune-compromised children. Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic she has contributed to our understanding of the establishment and durability of the antibody response against this virus in asymptomatic individuals and patients with mild disease, as well as to other important aspects of the immunology and epidemiology such as  identification of serological correlates of protection, blood innate immune profiling and virus transmission.