Lydie Trautmann, Ph.D., is an assistant member and principal investigator at the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida. She’s an expert in the role of immune cells that kill infected cells thereby controlling virus infections. She is also actively involved in defining how chronic viral infections result in immune dysfunction. Her work has been published in 20 articles in scientific journals.

Dr. Trautmann has extensively studied disease development following infection with the HIV virus. She has contributed to identifying a molecule called PD-1 that suppresses the body’s immune response to HIV infection, which has led to clinical trials targeting this molecule to help improve the immune system’s capacity to fight HIV infection. Her recent research has focused on using a systems biology approach, which takes an inter-disciplinary look at the complex interactions in biological systems, to study how acute HIV infection attacks the immune system on a molecular level.

Dr. Trautmann has earned a number of prestigious honors for her work, including fellowships from the Cancer Research Association of France, the Foundation for Medical Research in France, the French National League Against Cancer, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and master’s degree in biotechnology from Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France. She also holds a biotechnology engineering degree from the Strasbourg Graduate School of Biotechnology, and a doctorate in immunology from the University of Paris. She conducted her post-doctoral training at the University of Montreal.