New member of the ICTER ISC for the term 2024-2028, Deniz Dalkara is a tenured researcher in INSERM, France and leads a team on gene therapies and animal models of neurodegenerative disease at the Vision Institute in Paris.
She was awarded the Biovalley PhD thesis for method of protein delivery developed during her graduate studies. Later on she conducted a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Ernst Babmerg at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics before moving on to UC Berkeley to do a second post-doctoral training in 2007. At UC Berkeley, Dr. Dalkara applied viral engineering principals to enhance AAV vectors for their application in retinal degenerative diseases.
Her work includes molecular evolution and engineering of viral gene delivery vehicles and their application to develop innovative gene therapeutic strategies to combat blinding diseases of the retina. For her work in this area, she received Euretina Science and Medicine Innovation award in 2013 and she was selected Innovator under 35 –France by MIT Technology Review in 2014. Dr. Dalkara received the Young Investigator award to start her group at the Vision Institute in Paris and has been carrying on her research activities in this research institute with a strong focus on translational research.
