معرفی
Ismael Ben Fofana is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Biology Department at Boston College. His research focuses on HIV/AIDS vaccine development, SIV/macaque models, phage display technology, and antibody engineering. He leads the Fofana Lab, which integrates vaccine development, immune profiling, and genomic technologies to study antibody responses and viral pathogenesis.
Education: PhD in Genetics–Molecular Virology from the University of Cocody (Ivory Coast), with postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and Hokkaido University.
Research Interests:
- Understanding viral escape mechanisms and antibody evolution in HIV/SIV infections
- Developing novel antibody engineering approaches for vaccine design
- Utilizing next-generation sequencing to track viral variants and antibody repertoires
Key Scientific Contributions: His lab has advanced methods for identifying SIV-specific antibodies via phage display and single-molecule sequencing. Recent work includes studies on immune responses in severe COVID-19 cases among smokers.
Lab Members: Mentors undergraduate researchers in virology, immunology, and molecular biology techniques. Alumni have pursued MD, PhD, and medical research careers.
