Speaker Details

Rafael Polidoro Alves Barbosa

Dr. Rafael B. Polidoro is an Assistant Research Professor of Pediatrics in Infectious Diseases at the Indiana University School of Medicine, within the Ryan White Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health. He completed his PhD in 2015 at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, focusing on live-attenuated viral vector vaccines against T. cruzi and T. gondii. He also spent a year as a visiting PhD student at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Polidoro's postdoctoral training includes research on the role of gamma-9 delta-2 T cells in recognizing and killing Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cells at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital. He further studied the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in primary human NK and CD4 T cells to investigate the roles of APOBEC and stress granules in innate lymphocytes at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Additionally, he explored the impact of the gut microbiome on the impairment of systemic immunity against Plasmodium yoelii in a mouse model.

Dr. Polidoro's research has significant implications for vaccination, treatments, and understanding different immune responses in similar settings, where the primary variable might be the gut microbiome.