Speaker at FEMS2017 | EAM | EMBO | Leopoldina – National Academy of Sciences

Carmen Buchrieser is Professor at the Institut Pasteur, France. She obtained her PhD from the University of Salzburg, Austria, continued as a postdoc researcher in the USA and the Institut Pasteur, and was then appointed Director of the Biology of Intracellular Bacteria Unit at the Institut Pasteur in 2008.

Carmen’s scientific achievements have been recognized over the years. She has received the APART award from the Austrian Academy of Science for an outstanding postdoctoral project (1997), the Charles-Louis de Saulses de Freycinet Prize from the French Academy of Science (2005), the René Descartes Prize for collaborative research from the European Commission (2008), the Pasteur Vallery-Radot Prize from the French Academy of Science and National Library (20089) and the HUMBOLDT Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2012).

Her major research interest is in bacterial pathogenesis. Her laboratory is focused on the identification and study of bacterial virulence factors, with particular emphasis on their function, the mechanisms leading to their acquisition and their evolutionary origin. They use Legionella as a model, a bacterial genus that contains species like Legionella pneumophila and Legionella longbeachae which are both opportunistic pathogens causing Legionnaires’ disease, a severe pneumonia that can be fatal when not treated promptly.

Recently Carmen’s group developed a new research topic, the study of “nucleomodulins”. These are bacterial effectors secreted in the host cell that target the nucleus to induce epigenetic changes helping the pathogen to fight antibacterial defenses.