Michail S. Lionakis MD, ScD

Dr. Lionakis obtained his M.D. and Sc.D. from the University of Crete in Greece. In 2002, he came to the United States and worked as a research fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) under the mentorship of Dimitrios Kontoyiannis. At MDACC, Dr. Lionakis did clinical research on risk factors, diagnosis, and management of opportunistic fungal infections in cancer patients and bench research focusing on pharmacology and microbial factors in mouse and Drosophila models of invasive aspergillosis, fusariosis, and candidiasis.

After completing his clinical training in Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at NIAID, Dr. Lionakis joined the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology (LMI) in 2008 and began to work on fungal immunology under the mentorship of Philip Murphy. At LMI, Dr. Lionakis did bench research on how chemotactic factors regulate the innate immune response in invasive candidiasis. In 2010, he was recruited as an Assistant Clinical Investigator in the NIAID Transition Program in Clinical Research (TPCR) and established the Clinical Mycology Unit (CMU) within LMI. In 2012, Dr. Lionakis was recruited as a tenure-track investigator in the NIAID intramural research program and established the Fungal Pathogenesis Unit (FPU) within the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases (LCID).