Judit Penzes

Molecular and structural virologist
Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine
Rutgers University
Piscataway, New Jersey United States

Current term (2023 - 2026): First

Biography

Judit Penzes graduated as a BSc in biology and as an MSc in zoology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, in the years of 2009 and 2011, respectively. She obtained her PhD at the Veterinary Medical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2015. During her early research appointments, she gained expertise on the evolution and diversity of multiple families of DNA viruses, discovering several novel parvo-, circo-, and adenoviruses of lower vertebrates and arthropods. During her postdoctoral studies at INRS Armand-Frappier Health and Biotechnology Centre (Montreal, Canada) as well as at the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL, USA), she trained in RNA biology, host-virus interactions and structural virology of ssDNA viruses, involving various vertebrate and invertebrate animal hosts. Her current research endeavors at Rutgers University focus mostly on structural virology, to complement her expertise in virus evolution, discovery and host-virus interactions with a tool that allows her to study virus capsids in depth. Judit joined the ICTV in 2019, becoming the study group chair of the Parvoviridae study group, and later, in 2021, the study group chair of the Bidnaviridae study group as well. She became an elected member of the ICTV Executive Committee in 2023.