Koenraad Van Doorslaer is a Visiting Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. He conducted his PhD research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Burk.
Why I Chose Einstein
My P.I. in Belgium got his Ph.D. at Einstein, actually in the
same lab I worked in. So I knew that the school was good.
What’s Exciting About My Research at the Moment
There’s a certain drug that appears to block the
infection of HIV in women. With a [viral] subculture in mice the drug works beautifully,
but when you take it to clinical trials in humans, it doesn’t work. Apparently seminal
fluid alters the drug. My lab jumped in and showed how it works for HPV (human
papilloma virus), too, and then we tried to figure out what it is in seminal fluid
that interferes with the drug.
Best Thing About Being a Student at Einstein
The community of support. My relationship with my mentor was very important to
me. I had a full [faculty] advising committee that I could contact whenever I had a
need. And every Friday, we had a schoolwide "happy hour". I could talk outside the
lab with postdocs and faculty about how they went from graduating to postdoc to
getting a lab. They gave me their best advice on how to get there.