Speaker Details

Sabrina Absalon

Dr. Sabrina Absalon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2007 from the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France. Her graduate work in Dr. Philippe Bastin's lab at the Pasteur Institute Paris focused on studying flagellum assembly and function in the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei. She then moved to Boston for her first postdoctoral training in Dr. Anna Krichevsky's lab at the Harvard Institute of Medicine, where she investigated the contribution of microRNAs to Alzheimer's disease progression.

In 2011, Dr. Absalon returned to parasitology and joined Dr. Jeffrey Dvorin's research group at Boston Children's Hospital, where she studied the molecular pathogenesis of malaria infection. In October 2019, she joined the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Dr. Sabrina Absalon's lab focuses on the molecular mechanisms of Plasmodium parasites, particularly their nuclear and cellular division during the asexual life cycle stage. Her lab investigates how these parasites undergo asynchronous mitosis and the evolutionary advantages of this process. Additionally, they study host-pathogen interactions, especially during the liver stage of infection, and develop advanced microscopy techniques like Expansion Microscopy to better understand these dynamic cellular events