Plenary Speaker 2025
Rushika Perera
We are very pleased to confirm that our plenary speaker for 2025 is Dr Rushika Perera.
Dr. Rushika Perera is an Associate Professor at the Center for Vector-borne Infectious Diseases at Colorado State University, where she leads a research group investigating how host metabolism influences viral infections. Specifically, her group focuses on understanding the intricate relationships between metabolic processes and mosquito-borne viruses like dengue, Zika, and chikungunya in both the human host and mosquito vector.
Her team employs systems biology approaches such as metabolomics and lipidomics, together with molecular virology, and structural biology. By meticulously examining the metabolic environment of host cells, her team seeks to uncover the fundamental mechanisms that enable viral replication and transmission. Their work goes beyond traditional virology, focusing on the biochemical landscape that viruses navigate during infection.
The metabolic approach is particularly powerful because metabolites serve as dynamic indicators of the cellular state. These molecular intermediates provide a real-time snapshot of biological processes, offering unprecedented insights into disease progression. As such she is also able to use these methods to identify metabolite biomarker that are early predictors of severe disease. Dr. Perera believes that by understanding these metabolic pathways, scientists can potentially develop strategies to make the cellular environment less hospitable to viral invasion.
She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Metabolism of Infectious Diseases (C4MInD) at Colorado State University. C4MInD collaborative research ecosystem that brings together the expertise of over 65 CSU researchers to enable development of new treatments, preventions and diagnostics for infectious diseases by resolving host-vector-pathogen-environment interactions at a metabolic level.
