Biography: I obtained my bachelor's degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where I studied Comparative Literature. After two years at the University of Massachusetts in Boston doing post-baccalaureate work, I began my PhD in the department of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. During my PhD, I studied mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum parasites in the laboratory of Professor David Fidock. My work focused on mechanisms of resistance to the first-line antimalarial therapy artemisinin, as well as on selective inhibitors of the Plasmodium proteasome, a novel class of antimalarial compounds currently under drug development. I moved to Glasgow from New York in in 2021 to begin my postdoc in the Marti Lab.

Research Interests: My research in the Marti Lab is centred on investigating determinants of sexual differentiation in Plasmodium falciparum, with particular focus on parasite development within the hematopoietic niche of the bone marrow. The identification of the bone marrow as a major reservoir for both asexual blood-stage parasite replication and the development of transmission-competent gametocyte stages transformed our understanding of parasite biology. Nonetheless, the complex cellular composition of the bone marrow and its relative inaccessibility means that development of parasites therein has remained an understudied area of Plasmodium biology. I am applying single cell RNA sequencing to study P. falciparum development within the bone marrow using a combination of ex vivo and in vitro approaches. I am particularly interested in how parasites sense and adapt to the unique cellular and extracellular environments of this niche, and in how these factors drive differentiation and cell fate determination.