Dr. Agabian earned her MSc in Genetics from Adelphi University and Brookhaven Laboratories and her PhD in Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her research interests have centered on the molecular and cellular biology of parasitism and mechanisms by which parasites cause chronic diseases that continue to exact a devastating toll on children and adults in the developing world.

Dr. Agabian has been a pioneer in the field of parasite molecular biology. In over 25 years of research she and her colleagues and graduate students established molecular genetic techniques to study many pathogenic microbes and worms ranging from the agents of dengue, trachoma, amebiasis and malaria, to those which cause schistosomiasis and African sleeping sickness. In 1984 she was one of the first recipients of the Burroughs Wellcome Award for Molecular Parasitology and received a MacArthur award to establish a program in Molecular Parasitology at UCSF and UC Berkeley. From 1987-1995 she served as director of the Intercampus Program in Molecular Parasitology, a program that established research and training programs worldwide. With the advent of the AIDS pandemic she turned her attention to infections associated with HIV disease and in 1995 joined the UCSF School of Dentistry. She brought with her a program in infectious disease which focuses on the opportunistic fungal pathogen, Candida albicans, an important sentinel of HIV disease progression. Her current work examines the molecular basis of interaction between this fungal pathogen and its host.