IDCRC Mentee Profile: Cristina Tomatis Souverbielle, MD

Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Cristina Tomatis Souverbielle, MD, is a clinician-scholar and an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Her research interests include immune response to vaccines, viral infections in immunocompromised patients and febrile young infants, and vaccine trials.

Dr. Tomatis is a member of the IDCRC's Mentorship Program cohort. This is designed to offer mentoring and development of early career investigators and fellows in clinical and translational infectious diseases research. Learn more about the program here.

Tell us more about your background and what led you to a career in infectious disease research.

I was born in Lima, Peru. I have completed training in Peru, Spain and the U.S. My interest in infectious disease research started when I was a medical student in Peru. Here, I had the opportunity to work with great mentors and researchers, in the Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander von Humboldt, part of my medical school, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

I completed several electives with them, and then later worked as a field researcher in the Tuberculosis Research unit. I enjoyed so much the world of trying to find answers for our clinical questions as way to provide best clinical care and advance medicine simultaneously. Here I learned how to conduct clinical and test validation studies, data entry, data analysis, IRB functions, logistics and operational management. This led me to decide to become a pediatric infectious diseases clinician scientist.

Can you share more about your research and the goals of your work?

My current research goals are to understand the immune response to vaccines and viral infections in different populations, such as patients with inflammatory bowel disease, via system immunology tools (spectral flow cytometry, transcriptomics and proteomics). My goal is to understand how we can improve vaccine response while also finding possible biomarkers of disease outcomes and newer therapeutic targets.

What are you looking forward to most in the IDCRC Mentorship Program?

I am most looking forward to learn from these amazing experts and role model clinician scientists as well as my co-mentees, peer early career scientists who share this journey with me. I look forward to the networking and collaborations we can form and the support we can bring each other.

What is a strength of the importance of the IDCRC?

The greatest strength is the multicenter collaboration for the science and also the support of scientists throughout the country. The combined infrastructure strengthens what each one institution/investigator can do alone, while also saving or better utilizing resources. Together we can go further, in a more organized, more efficient way.

What do you like to do outside of ID research?

Outside of research i like to spend time with my family, go for hikes, bike rides, reading, seeing art, theater, musicals. I enjoy running, dancing, sailing and watching soccer.