How does a virus cause disease after transmission?

Nationality: German

Position: Professor Virology, Heinrich-Pette-Institute, Leibniz Institute of Virology, Germany

Research fields: Interspecies transmission and pathogenesis of influenza A viruses; High-risk groups of influenza (pregnancy, asthma, obesity); New antiviral strategies against influenza

ESWI member since 2009

Dr. Gabriel is head of the research department Viral Zoonoses – One Health at the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg and professor for virology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover. Professor Gabriel’s main research interest is to understand how avian influenza viruses cross species barriers and transmit to humans causing large epidemics and eventually pandemics. Herein, a special focus lies on influenza virus pathogenesis in high-risk groups, such as pregnant women.

Dr. Gabriel studied Biology at the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany, and obtained her PhD in 2006. Afterwards, she moved to the United Kingdom where she held the position of a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford until 2009. In 2009, Dr. Gabriel moved back to Germany where she received the prestigious Emmy-Noether Research Award funded by the German Research Foundation to lead a junior group at the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg.

From 2014-2018, she was the head of the research group influenza pathogenesis at the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg and professor for virology at the University of Lübeck. Since 2018, she is the head of the research department Viral Zoonoses – One Health at the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg and professor for virology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover.

In 2009, Dr. Gabriel was the first winner of the ESWI Best Body of Work Award. She was elected Vice Chair of ESWI in 2014. Dr. Gabriel received many prestigious awards, among them the Robert Koch Förderpreis (2012), the Best Minds Award from the Leibniz Association (2018) and the Prize for Translational Infection Research of the German Research Center for Infection (2019).