Ivona Aksentijevich, M.D. is an Associate Investigator at the National Human Research Genome Institute, Bethesda, USA. She received her medical degree from the University of Belgrade in former Yugoslavia. Dr. Aksentijevich is Board certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics, and she runs the molecular diagnostic laboratory for patients with autoinflammatory diseases. Dr. Aksentijevich was the first co-author on the seminal paper published in Cell, 1999, that proposed the widely accepted concept of autoinflammatory disease to denote a group of disorders mediated by cells of the innate immune system. Dr. Aksentijevich has been a major participant in the discovery of ten monogenic autoinflammatory diseases, including FMF, TRAPS, NOMID, DIRA, APLAID, DADA2, CANDLE, SIFD, HA20, Otulipenia, and VEXAS. Finding the molecular basis of disease served as a foundation for using new therapies in patients with these chronic and often debilitating disorders. Dr. Aksentijevich served as the President of the International Society for Autoinflammatory Diseases.