Dr. Angelique Corthals a biomedical researcher and forensic anthropologist. Her biomedical research is specialized in the link between neurodegeneration, metabolism and environmental triggers (pathogens, stress, trauma) in neurological and infectious diseases, as well as aging.
Dr. Corthals' biological/forensic anthropology research focuses on the histopathology of trauma and diseases, including computational solutions (machine-learning) to analyze and accurately render morphological features and link them to their molecular mechanisms.
These two foci of research, as well as her experience building and developing Biobanks (biological repositories) for both medicine and natural history applications, have led her to be a consultant expert with Doctors without Borders on diagnostic technology and clinical guidelines for HIV/TB, neglected or emerging diseases (e.g. Chagas, COVID-19) for use in Low and Middle Income Countries or Communities (LMICs).
In 2020, Dr. Corthals received two grants from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with her spouse, Dr. Liliana Davalos, an evolutionary biologist at Stony Brook University, to study the mechanisms of infection evasion of coronaviruses by chiropterans (bats). The first grant is centered on bat goblet cells as immuno-hotspots for infection of coronavirus and the second, in collaboration with Texas Tech University, on immunological adaptations in bats to moderate the effect of coronavirus infection.
