Lena Al-Harthi, PhD

Lena Al-Harthi, PhD, is a professor and chair in the Department of Microbial Pathogens and Immunity. She is also the program director of the Rush Initiative to Maximize Student Development, or Rush-IMSD, an NIH-funded training grant for underrepresented minority PhD students enrolled in the PhD in Integrated Biomedical Sciences program in the Graduate College. Al-Harthi received her PhD from the George Washington University in microbiology. Her dissertation research was conducted as an NIH pre-intramural research training fellow at the laboratory of tumor cell biology, headed by Robert Gallo, MD, a co-discoverer of HIV and under the mentorship of Suresh Arya, PhD. She then conducted her postdoctoral training in HIV immunology at Rush University Medical Center and climbed up the academic ladder to full professor. Her research is focused on understanding mechanism(s) driving HIV neurocognitive disorders (HAND) and HIV latency in the central nervous system. Specifically, she studies the role of astrocytes in HAND and HIV latency. Al-Harthi has more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and reviews and has given many invited talks worldwide relating to HIV pathogenesis, especially in the central nervous system. She served on national and international grant review study sections, where she chaired or co-chaired several of these panels, and was the chair of the NeuroAIDS and other End-Organ Diseases NIH study section.