Lara García Álvarez

Lara García Álvarez

Email: lgalvarez.ext@riojasalud.es

Phone: +34 941 278 870 (Ext.:89870)

Biosketch

She was graduated in Pharmacy at the University of Navarra in 2007. Thanks to the Spanish Network for research in infectious Diseases (REIPI) she joined to the Research Group of Dr. José Antonio Oteo in 2010. In the same year, she obtained a Master's Thesis in Advanced Chemistry at the University of La Rioja (Spain) and, in 2011, she obtained a specialization on Bioinformatics: genomic and molecular biology by the Oberta University of Cataluña (Spain).

Her PhD thesis research, directed by Dr. José Antonio Oteo and Dr. Héctor Busto, began in 2010 and it is focused on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) as technique to study antimicrobial susceptibility. The results obtained during this research allowed getting the patent of the NMR technique for antimicrobial susceptibility assays in 2013 (No. 201030724). In 2012, she enjoyed a 2-month stay at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD (USA) at the Pathology Department under the supervision of Dr. J. Stephen Dumler.

She currently works as a PhD student at the Center for Rickettsioses and Arthropod borne diseases, attached to the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Hospital San Pedro-CIBIR, and she will obtain her doctorate this year. As part of a multidisciplinary team, lead by Dr. Oteo, she is devoted to the study of diseases transmitted by arthropods like rickettsiosis, anaplasmosis, Q fever, Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF)… as well as other infectious diseases as Whipple Disease, hepatitis, HIV or endocarditis, among others. As part of these studies, she has been involved in the detection of a microorganism in ticks for the first time in our country (Candidatus Neoehrichia mikurensis) and in the description of a new bacteria (Rickettsia vini). She has participated in various national and international projects, networks and clinical trials. She has more than 20 publications in scientific journals and a book chapter.

Since 2013 up to the present, she is professor at the Nursing School of the University of La Rioja teaching Physiology and Biochemistry and she has co-directed 11 Final Degree Projects.