Dr. Hatoum-Aslan is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She received her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology from Florida Tech, M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the American University of Beirut, and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University in 2007. Subsequently, she completed postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Bacteriology. She started her independent research program at the University of Alabama in 2014 and moved to UIUC in 2020.
Her research aims to advance the basic knowledge of how bacteria and their viruses (i.e. phages) interact and explore new paradigms that challenge fundamental assumptions regarding bacterial immunity. Also, basic insights into bacterial immune systems such as CRISPR-Cas and the phage-encoded mechanisms that counter them are synergistically applied to discover and engineer new phages as a basis for alternative treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections. She has received several honors, including an NIH K22 Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases Award.