Virginia Aragon The Prato Conference on the Pathogenesis of Bacterial Infections of Animals 2016

Virginia Aragon

Dr. Aragon is a biologist with extensive experience bacterial pathogenesis. She completed her PhD at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) working with Brucella, mainly B. melitensis and B. abortus, under the supervision of Dr. Moriyón. During her doctoral studies, she purified and characterized native polysaccharides from the surface of these virulent bacteria. She continued her scientific career at three different universities in the USA (University of Missouri-Kansas City, Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas), where she worked in different aspects of the pathogenicity of bacteria. Dr Aragon joined the Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal (CReSA), Barcelona, in 2003 and established herself as a leading scientist in the research line of respiratory bacterial infections of swine. Currently Dr Aragon is involved in the genomic and functional characterization of the swine pathogen Haemophilus parasuis. In the last years she has extended her research focus to unravel molecular mechanisms and components responsible for H. parasuis pathogenesis. Her scientific achievements are published in peer-reviewed international journals in the areas of Microbiology and Veterinary Medicine and are also divulged to clinicians and producers in technical talks. Her research is mainly funded by competitive grants from the Spanish Government.