Dr Julia Port

Julia Rebecca Port was born on September 14th, 1990, in Gelnhausen, Germany. After completing a bachelor's degree at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Molecular Medicine; B.Sc.) and a master's degree at the University of Antwerp (Biomedical Sciences; M.Sc.), she began her scientific career with her doctorate at the Leibniz Institute for Virology and at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine under the direction of Prof. Dr. César Muñoz-Fontela. During her postdoc at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (NIAID, NIH (USA) in the group of Dr. Vincent Munster, in the department of Dr. Heinz Feldmann), she led experimental projects that addressed urgent public health needs during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: this led to the first description of immunopathology following aerosol infection, the first experimental demonstration of fine aerosol transmission, and evidence for an immunity-derived competitiveness in transmission. She also developed models to study the transmission of the Mpox virus across mucosal surfaces and the immune response and microbiome in bats in the context of viral infections. Her research has led to numerous authorships in peer-reviewed journals and has been honored multiple times with the NIH Director's Award and NIH Merit Award. As of May 1st, 2024, Dr. Port accepted the leadership of the new group "Laboratory of Transmission Immunology" at the HZI after successfully acquiring the Helmholtz Young Investigator Grant.