Branka Horvat, MD PhD (CV: http://cvscience.aviesan.fr/cv/1422/branka-horvat) is Inserm Research Director and Head of the “Immunobiology of Viral Infections” Team at the International Centre for Infectiology Research (CIRI) in Lyon, France (https://ciri.ens-lyon.fr/teams/IbIV). She received MD degree at Belgrade University and performed her doctoral studies at Yale University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in New Haven, USA and postdoctoral research at CIML in Marseille, France. From 2006, she is full time researcher in French medical research Institute INSERM. Her projects aim understanding the immunopathogenesis of Nipah and measles virus infection and particularly the early stages of activation of the innate immune response. In addition, she has been interested in the development and characterisation of the murine transgenic model of HHV-6 infection. She focuses her studies to host-pathogen interactions and development of preventive and therapeutic antiviral approaches. Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemics she has extended her studies to the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Her work has led to major advances in this area, revealing the different aspects of viral immunopathogenesis. She is involved in the teaching at Lyon University and has been actively implicated in the training and supervision of numerous students and postdoctoral fellows. She is co-inventor of 5 patents and has published 95 papers in international journals.
