Monica is a former PhD student in the NIMML, studying Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology with a B.S. in Biotechnology from Barcelona. Monica is a mucosal immunologist interested in understanding the basic mechanisms by which the host immune system interacts with microbial and environmental triggers during health and disease, with the aim to translate new biological knowledge into more effective and safer therapeutics for human Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). As an immunologist she is particularly interested in the interface of immunology, microbiome, and autoimmunity. In her current position at the Roberts Institute for IBD Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, she combines high-throughput microbial sequencing with experimental immunology techniques to identify the expansion of immune-reactive intestinal bacteria in patients with Crohn’s disease-associated peripheral spondyloarthritis, which promote Th17-dependent inflammation in humans and pre-clinical mouse models. The long-term goal of her research is to discover microbial and cellular mechanisms that will lead to improved clinical makers for early diagnosis and novel therapies for IBD.