Assistant Professor
Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology
- Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology
Filipa Rijo-Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology who studies circadian rhythms in parasitic diseases such as sleeping sickness and malaria.
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.
- 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
- Molecular parasitology and daily host-parasite interactions
- Mosquito vector biology in malaria infection
- Host circadian rhythms, immunology and metabolism