Pandemics and Alertness member WG1 (Understanding the virus), LINXS Fellow

Department of Clinical Microbiology, Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine & Umeå Centre for Microbial Research, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

Marta Bally was trained in Material Sciences at ETH Zürich where she also carried out her doctoral studies in biomedical engineering. This was followed by a post-doc period at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and Institut Curie(France), where she trained in biophysics. During this period, she became increasingly interested in developing and implementing advanced bioanalytical tools to study virus interactions at the cell surface. In 2013, she became Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology. In 2018, she was recruited by the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine at Umeå University, where she started working as a group leader within the section of virology (Department of Clinical Microbiology). Since 2022, she has been Associate Professor in Virology and since 2024, she has been the Deputy Director of the Umeå Centre for Microbial Research, a large center gathering 77 PIs with interest in various aspects of microbial research. Her current research is centered on viral entry. More specifically, she studies the molecular mechanisms by which the interaction dynamics of a virus particle are modulated at the cell surface, with emphasis on the role of carbohydrates in the process. She carries out a highly interdisciplinary research program at the interface between physics, chemistry and virology.