Prof. Dr. F. Nina Papavasiliou
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Prof. F. Nina Papavasiliou studied Biology at Oberlin College and Rockefeller University. During her Diploma and Graduate thesis at the Rockefeller University, she got interested in B lymphocyte antigen receptors (antibodies), how those get recombined from gene segments to create the primary repertoire and how they undergo mutation to generate antigen-specific immune repertoires. She followed this interest during her post-doctoral studies at Yale Medical School (with David G. Schatz). This interest remains one of the current topics of her laboratory.
In 2001 she returned to the Rockefeller University as an assistant professor, to start her own junior group focusing on the mechanism of antibody diversification. She was promoted to associate professor in 2007, after which she started two additional lines of work, keeping within the topic of mechanisms that generate phenotypic diversity within populations: (a) on antigenic variation by the African trypanosome (a perfect foil for the antibody response) and (b) on RNA editing as a mechanism of sequence diversification and possibly phenotypic plasticisity in immune cells and in tumors. In 2016 she arrived at the DKFZ to head the Division of Immune Diversity, and in 2018 she was appointed as W3-professor at the University of Heidelberg.