Affiliation: Rice University, BioSciences Department

Dr. Natasha Kirienko is an Associate Professor at Rice University. Her research focuses on the broad biochemical importance of mitochondria, whose dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a key contributor in a wide variety of diseases and may be a crucial determinant of aging. Dr. Kirienko’s research is devoted to three broad, interrelated questions: 1) How are mitochondria involved in host-microbe relationships? 2) How are mitochondria surveilled? 3) How can mitochondrial homeostasis be leveraged to treat disease? Dr. Kirienko received her PhD at the University of Wyoming where she used Caenorhabditis elegans as model for cancer and stress response research. During her postdoc at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Dr. Kirienko continued working with C. elegans, using it as a tool to study host-pathogen interactions and high-throughput screening for drug discovery.