Inna Ovsyannikova

Dr. Inna Ovsyannikova is the Director of Laboratory-based Studies for Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group and a Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Ovsyannikova brings a comprehensive, systems-level understanding of how sex, age, and race affect innate and adaptive immunity, particularly regarding influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and Covid-19 vaccine response. She is a leading researcher in the field of age-related changes and defects in the regulation and function of immune responses to the influenza vaccine virus in elderly persons.

She has published over 250 scientific manuscripts and 17 books/book chapters and has participated in more than 180 scientific exhibits and presentations at national and international societies. Dr. Ovsyannikova is the Associate Editor of Vaccine: X and also holds current membership in the American Association of Immunologists and the American Society for Microbiology. She has served on many National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections and international review panels.

Dr. Ovsyannikova’s research areas of interest also include: 1) studies of the genetics of innate and adaptive immune responses to viral and bacterial vaccines, including influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, vaccinia, and anthrax; 2) areas of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases, particularly the application of mass spectrometry/bioinformatics used to develop peptide-based vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, influenza, smallpox, measles, Zika, and agents of bioterrorism; 3) gene polymorphisms, immunosenescence markers and predictors of vaccine immune response, including adverse events; 4) viral antigen processing and HLA presentation; and 5) systems biology high-dimensional vaccine studies utilizing platforms such as gene expression microarrays, DNA methylation arrays and next generation sequencing (mRNA-Seq, miRNA-Seq, and single-cell mRNA-Seq).