Indira T Kudva is a Research Microbiologist and Lead Scientist at the National Animal Disease Center, USDA, Ames, Iowa. She has received her BSc in Zoology and MSc in Medical Microbiology degrees from India, PhD in Microbiology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Idaho and trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Idaho, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She has over 25 years of experience in the field of microbiology, molecular biology and infectious diseases. She has 29 peer-reviewed publications, 3 invited reviews, 27 meeting abstracts, 18 invited talks, 8 funded grants and novel inventions (4 patent applications). She is also an adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University; the Executive Editor for the “Virulence Mechanisms of Bacterial Pathogens†book, 5th Edition, ASM press and is on the Editorial Boards of the Applied and Environmental Microbiology (ASM press) and the SRL Proteomics and Bioinformatics (SciRes Literature) journals.