16.09.2016

Dr Ilaria Capua, DVM, PhD, trained as a veterinarian and has worked ever since graduation as a virologist. In June she became the director of the Center for Excellence in One Health Research at the University of Florida.
Additionally, she is a professor at IFAS ( Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences) and a member of the Emerging Pathogens Institute. 
In February 2013 she was elected as a member of the Italian Parliament, and previously she was the director of the Division of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Legnaro (Padova, Italy), which hosts the National OIE/FAO Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease, the OIE Collaborating Center for Diseases at the Human-Animal Interface and the FAO Reference Center for Rabies.
Capua became well-known in the world of influenza for making a stand for public access to genetic data about influenza and refusing to participate in a database that made such data available to selected researchers only.