Irina Podgorny is a tenured member of the Argentinian science council, Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), which coordinates the promotion of academic and technical research in Argentina. She is also a professor and the director of the Archivo Histórico y Fotográfico at the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo of the University in La Plata. Podgorny's research relies on the close relationship among German, other European, and Latin American collections, and she combines historical research with innovative forms of cooperation.

From 2001 to 2012 Podgorny was a professor of the history of science at Universidad de Quilmes in Argentina. She has also worked as a visiting professor and fellow at numerous prestigious universities and research institutions, including Rio de Janeiro, Université Paris Diderot, the University of Paris IV-Paris-Sorbonne, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Wofford College in South Carolina (USA). As part of Podgorny's research stay at Freie Universität, scholars from various universities, independent research institutions, and museums who do research on the history of science will be linked in research networks.