BIOGRAPHY:

Silvi Rouskin immigrated from Bulgaria to the USA by herself at the age of 15 to peruse a career in science. At 16 she enrolled in college at Florida Institute of Technology, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics. After doing research on detecting new viruses in the lab of Joe DeRisi , Silvi obtained a PhD in biochemistry at University of California San Francisco. Her graduate thesis in the lab of Jonathan Weissman used leading edge sequencing technology to develop a method for probing RNA structure genome-wide inside living cells. After obtaining her PhD, Silvi started her own research group in the Whitehead Insite for Biomedical Research at MIT. Her lab developed approaches for single molecule RNA structure probing and identified alternative structures that regulate gene expression of HIV-1. At the onset of the pandemic, her lab was one of the first to provide a complete secondary structure for the genome of SARS-CoV2 and contributed to the design of novel coronavirus therapeutics. Her achievements were recognized by 2021 Vilcek Prize for creative promise in biomedical science. Since September of 2021 Silvi Rouskin became an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Microbiology, where she continues to study RNA viruses.