Karine Gaëlle Le Roch, PhD

Professor of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology
Director Center for Infectious Disease and Vector Research
University of California, Riverside

Short Bio: Dr Le Roch has more than 20 years’ experience in drug discovery, cell cycle and functional genomics in eukaryotic organisms with a particular interest in Plasmodium. She received her BA. in biochemistry/chemistry in 1995 from the University of Paris VI Sorbonne, France.  She then joined the laboratory of Prof. M. Doenhoff in North Wales University, UK as an assistant Researcher to work on the development of a vaccine strategy against Schistosomiasis.  Following this research experience, Dr. Le Roch obtained her master’s degree in Parasitology in 1997 at the University of Lille II, France and the University of Oxford, UK.  She completed her Ph.D. in June 2001 at the University of Paris VI Sorbonne under the supervision of Prof C. Deorig.  Her work focused on cell cycle regulation and protein kinases in the human malaria parasite. In 2001, as a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Le Roch joined the Scripps Research Institute, USA, where she worked with Prof. E. Winzeler on the functional genomics of malaria parasites. In January 2004, as a research fellow, she joined the Genomic Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) where she set up the malaria drug discovery program. Since April 2006, as an Assistant, Associate and now Professor at the University of California Riverside (UCR), Dr. Le Roch expanded her research scope by investigating new high-throughput functional genomics methods. In particular, her laboratory develops new high throughput assays to identify epigenetics, chromatin and molecular features driving parasite gene expression. Since 2016, Dr. le Roch is also the Director of the UCR Center for Infectious Disease and Vector Research (http://cdvr.ucr.edu/).