Research: Soumba Traore is a student in the MD/PhD program at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School. Currently, she is a first year graduate student in Michael Gale Jr.'s lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UMN. Her interests involve viral pathogenesis and regulation of antiviral innate immunity. In the Gale lab, Soumba is focused on elucidating the impact of Zika virus infection on distinct cytokine-induced Jak/STAT signaling pathways during pregnancy. She is also a member of the University of Minnesota Institute on Infectious Diseases (UMIID), where she, as graduate student, aims to collaborate with leading experts studying emerging and contemporary infectious diseases. Soumba's primary goal as a future physician-scientist is to leverage insights from viral immunology to design therapies and interventions that mitigate the consequences of infectious diseases.
