Irina Catrina is a Senior Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Hunter College of CUNY, New York. She received a Chemical Engineering degree from the University "Politehnica" of Bucharest, Romania, and a Physical-Organic Chemistry Ph.D. degree from Utah State University, UT. At USU, in Alvan Hengge's lab she studied the use of phosphorothioates as models for deciphering the mechanism and transiton state structure of phosphoryl transfer reactions. She then studied nucleic acid folding and developed a microarray to improve prediction of RNA secondary structure in Doug Turner's lab at the University of Rochester, NY. From Rochester, she moved to Worcester MA, where she studied viral RNA replication in Maria Zapp's lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In Diana Bratu's lab at Hunter College she uses RNA visualization techniques to study endogenous and viral RNA trafficking in live fruit fly egg chambers.
