Ana Traven is a Professor and NHMRC Investigator Fellow in the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University, where she founded the Infection Program and established and co-led an international postdoctoral training program in antimicrobial resistance within the Monash-Warwick Alliance. Ana obtained her PhD in 2002 from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. As a postdoctoral fellow, she trained at the St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, supported by the NHMRC Peter Doherty Postdoctoral Fellowship. After a sabbatical in the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University (supported by a Short-Term Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program), in 2009 Ana started her own research group at Monash University, focusing on infectious diseases caused by pathogenic fungi. She has been recognised by the Georgina Sweet Award for Women in Quantitative Biomedical Science (2018), a Level 3 ARC Future Fellowship (2019), a Leadership 2 NHMRC Investigator Grant  (2024), and internationally by election as a Fellow of the European Confederation of Medical Mycology and Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Microbial pathogens are responsible for millions of deaths globally. In addition to bacteria, fungi are  important pathogens of hositalised patients. Cancer, HIV, organ transplants and intensive care hospitalisation are predisposing factors for life-threatening fungal infections. Although 2.5 million people die from fungal infections every year, there are no vaccines and we have only a handful of antifungal drugs classes to treat these deadly infections.

In 2022, the WHO published a call to action, the first Fungal Pathogens Priority list. The Traven lab focuses on two pathogens that are classified as of "critical" priority by the WHO: Candida albicans and Candida auris. The lab is using advanced molecular approaches, coupled with imaging and infection models to understand how these pathogens cause infections and their evasion of host immunity. The overarching goal is to identify strategies that could improve infection survival by inhibiting virulence pathways, improving immune control of fungi and promoting disease tolerance.