Filipa ​Rijo-Ferreira, PhD, MSc

Biography

Dr. Filipa Rijo-Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Berkeley Public Health with a joint appointment in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, Immunology and Molecular Medicine division. Malaria major symptom is its rhythmic fevers. Rijo-Ferreira’s research addresses how daily rhythms of hosts, vectors and parasites define the outcome of parasitic diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness. The Rijo-Ferreira Lab combines molecular parasitology, mosquito development and immunology and neuroscience to ask questions about the role of circadian rhythms in the evolution and pathogenesis of parasitic infections. Circadian rhythms provide an advantage to organisms from bacteria to humans, thus a deeper understanding of the daily biology of parasites will enable design of effective interventions. Rijo-Ferreira is a NIH Pathway to independence award recipient, a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator and a 2023 Searle Scholar.

Research Interests

• Molecular parasitology and daily host-parasite interactions
• Mosquito vector biology in malaria infection
• Host circadian rhythms, immunology and metabolism

Education

• Postdoctoral – UT Southwestern Medical Center
• PhD – Molecular Parasitology
  University of Porto
• MSc – Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine
  Nova University of Lisbon & Imperial College London
• BA – Cell and Molecular Biology
  Nova University of Lisbon

Publications

• Google Scholar
• PubMed