Martina Bergant Marušič

Martina is Assistant Professor, (UNG-LELS) primarily interested in host-pathogen interactions in persistent viral infections that contribute to virus-related carcinogenesis and in human papillomavirus (HPV) biology. She is developing these research areas in close collaboration with the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Trieste, Italy. She is the director of the PhD programme in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology (UNG ) and was a member of the Governing Board of the Centre for Functional Genomics and Bio-Chips (2014-2022). Recent research activities in her group are generating large amounts of data related to the transcriptome, methylome, and editome of host cells during virus-related cancerogenesis. Machine learning is crucial for the analysis and interpretation of these big, high-throughput data for the discovery of molecular patterns in both normal biological processes and disease states, particularly cancer.