After getting an MD degree and working as a general practitioner for two years in a Mother and Child Health Clinic in Turkey, Leyla Anderson came to the U.S in 1994 to pursue a PhD degree in Medical Microbiology and Immunology. 

Leyla received her PhD in 1994 from Rosalind Franklin University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School where she studied epidemiology of leishmaniasis, a tropical parasitic disease.  Supported by the Brown-Coxe postdoctoral fellowship, she continued her studies at Yale University, Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health, working on another vector-borne parasitic disease, i.e., African Sleeping Sickness. 

Leyla is now an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and works on malaria. Her research focuses on the mosquito innate immunity against malaria parasite with the ultimate goal of developing novel technologies for vector control, such as generation of transgenic mosquitoes that can no longer transmit the parasite.