Dr. Ivana Parker is an Assistant Professor in the J Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her lab at the University of Florida explores questions at the intersection of global health, immunology, and women’ s health and aims to identify novel therapeutic targets for inflammatory syndromes that increase HIV risk. Before coming to UF, Dr. Parker was awarded a Fulbright to the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she investigated how BCG, a commonly used TB vaccine increases maternal to child transmission of HIV. For her postdoctoral work, Dr. Parker received an ASM/CDC postdoctoral fellowship in Infectious Disease Microbiology and Public Health. At the CDC, she evaluated the impact of HIV prevention techniques on diagnostic assay accuracy and identified trends to optimize assay design. Dr. Parker received her PhD in Bioengineering from Georgia Tech, and she received numerous awards while there, including the NSF graduate research fellowship and was selected as an NIH Cell and Tissue Engineering Trainee. She also received a Whitaker Grant to develop artificial aortic valves in Cape Town, South Africa and facilitated set-up of a lab in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Parker earned her BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida in 2009. While at UF she was very active in STEP-UP as a mentor/tutor and in NSBE as PCI chair. Dr. Parker has 3 children and is very well supported by her spouse Jon Parker, which made it possible to dually pursue dreams of family and career.
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