Nora J. Besansky

Principal Investigator

O'Hara Professor of Biological Sciences

Email: nbesansk (at) nd (dot) edu

Office: 317 Galvin Life Sciences

Phone#: 574-631-9321

 

An early commitment to vector biology and public health was cemented while still an Oberlin undergraduate, working summers in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases at the NIH, and spending a semester abroad in Costa Rica.  I joined the laboratory of Jeffrey Powell at Yale University in 1984 to search for transposable elements in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae, receiving my Ph.D. in Genetics in 1990. After a postdoctoral fellowship studying the molecular biology of HIV and HTLV retroviruses at the CDC Retroviral Diseases Branch, I returned to malaria research in 1991 as a CDC staff scientist in the Malaria Branch.  From 1992 until my departure in 1997, I also held an adjunct Assistant Professor appointment with the Department of Biology, Emory University.  Since 1997, I've been a faculty member of the University of Notre Dame, where I've continued malaria vector research.