Dr. Astrid Cardona is Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Dr. Cardona is a scientist educator with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from The UT Health Science Center, San Antonio, and continued her post-postdoctoral training in autoimmunity and neurodegeneration at the Cleveland Clinic. She joined UTSA in 2009 and established a research program in neuroinflammation. Dr. Cardona’s laboratory studies the interplay between the nervous and immune systems in diabetes and multiple sclerosis. She is interested in clarifying the protective and detrimental roles of the innate immune system, determining the origin of tissue injury factors that account for disease progression, and testing neuroprotective therapies via modulation of immune cell function. Her research has been supported by the NIH, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the San Antonio Area Foundation, and the San Antonio Medical Foundation. Dr. Cardona serves as the contact program director for the UTSA MMI-T32 training program in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She is a fellow of the IAspire Leadership Academy. She has served as editor for Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, The International Journal of Neurochemistry, and currently for the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

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