Dr. Maria Mota has been a Group Leader at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM) in Lisbon, Portugal since 2005 and Executive Director since 2014. She is also an invited Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon. Her lab studies the complex interactions between the malaria parasite Plasmodium and the human host. A better understanding of these interactions is needed if we hope to effectively control this deadly parasite.
Dr. Mota received her BS and MSc degrees from Porto University, her PhD in Molecular Parasitology from University College London, and she was a postdoctoral fellow at New York University Medical Center. Before joining iMM, Mota was a Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (2002-2005), a European Science Foundation Young Investigator (2004-2009) and an HHMI International Research Scholar (2005-2010). Mota was elected as a member of EMBO in 2016. Learn more about Dr. Mota’s research here.