Krisztina Papp Wallace, Ph.D.

Dr. Krisztina Papp-Wallace is an Associate Study Director at Element/JMI Laboratories, where she leads and supports antimicrobial drug development, global surveillance, and research programs focused on antimicrobial resistance. She previously served as Operations Manager at JMI Laboratories, overseeing clinical microbiology operations and a broad portfolio of drug development, clinical trial, and surveillance studies.

Dr. Papp-Wallace is an internationally recognized antimicrobial resistance researcher with expertise in β-lactamases, β-lactam/β-lactamase inhibitor combinations, and resistance mechanisms in Gram-negative pathogens. Before joining JMI Laboratories, she was a tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Case Western Reserve University and an independently funded investigator with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Cleveland Ohio. Her research has resulted in more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, and she served as a principal investigator on nearly $4 million in federally and industry-funded research focused on antimicrobial resistance and antibacterial therapeutics.

Associations

Dr. Papp-Wallace has served on the Editorial Board of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy since 2014 and the Editorial Board of Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease since 2024. She has been an Editor for Microbiology Spectrum since 2022 and currently serves as Section Editor-in-Chief for the “Mechanism and Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance” section of Antibiotics.

She has served as a reviewer for more than 70 scientific journals and as a grant reviewer for U.S. and international funding organizations. She has also contributed to American Society for Microbiology programming focused on antimicrobial agents and resistance.

Education

Dr. Papp-Wallace earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She subsequently completed postdoctoral training in infectious diseases at Case Western Reserve University, where her research focused on β-lactamases (i.e., KPCs), antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, and strategies to restore the activity of β-lactam antibiotics against multidrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens.