Dr Iana Fedorova
Iana Fedorova studied biophysics at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in Russia. During her PhD, she worked in Professor Konstantin Severinov's Laboratory at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia) and Professor Feng Zhang's Laboratory at the Broad Institute (USA), where she studied CRISPR-Cas systems and developed genome-editing tools based on Cas nucleases. After receiving her PhD from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in 2020, Dr. Fedorova became interested in the biology of antiviral prokaryotic immune systems. In 2021, she established a research group at Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University to study antiviral immunity in archaea and bacteria. In 2022, she moved to the USA to learn genetic approaches and study bacteriophages as a postdoctoral scientist in the Laboratory of Joseph Bondy-Denomy at UCSF. During her work at UCSF, Dr. Fedorova unveiled various strategies that phages use to overcome antiviral bacterial signaling-based defenses (TIR- and cGAS-like systems). In 2026, Iana Fedorova established the junior research group Antiviral Immunity of Bacteria (AIBA) at HZI to understand which antiviral barriers clinical bacterial strains use to resist phages, with the aim of improving phage therapy.
