Celeste Faia

Celeste Faia is a doctoral student at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Parasitology. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of New Orleans, graduating summa cum laude, after which she was employed at the Louisiana Cancer Research Center in New Orleans at the intersection of clinical and research sciences in the Biospecimen Core Laboratory.

The focus of her work in the lab of Dr. Francesca Peruzzi is innate immune dysfunction, primarily that of myeloid-derived cells, in HIV-infected individuals undergoing combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) as a means to define the mechanisms responsible for the increased incidence of cancer development in this demographic compared to an uninfected population. She is working to establish an in vitro model for the in-depth study of observations made in HIV-derived primary cells.