Postdoc Profile: Mohammed Youssef
Mohammed YoussefMentor: Dr. Tomoyuki Murakami
Education: PhD, Kumamoto University, Japan
Research Summary: As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Murakami’s lab, my research interest focuses on HIV persistence—particularly the mechanisms that drive reservoir establishment early after infection and the host–virus determinants that sustain long-term persistence despite therapy. I am especially interested in defining the cellular and molecular features of reservoir-seeding events, identifying pathways that promote survival and clonal maintenance of infected cells, and leveraging sensitive molecular and single-cell approaches to quantify and characterize persistent HIV genomes and transcriptional activity. Ultimately, my goal is to generate mechanistic insights that inform strategies to prevent reservoir formation and to disrupt durable HIV persistence.