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People
Simões Laboratory
STAFF
Maria Luísa Simões, PhD
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Maria Luísa was Faculty Research Associate at Johns Hopkins University (USA) and Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK) before joining ITM as Associate Professor in 2023. She graduated in 2014 with a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Nova University Lisbon, Portugal, and Imperial College London, UK). She is the Chair for the American Committee of Medical Entomology (ACME), and member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) annual meeting scientific committee.
Estelle Chabanol, PhD
RESEARCH FELLOW / POSTDOC
Estelle earned her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Université de Guyane and Institut Pasteur de la Guyane (French Guiana) in 2023. Her projects leverage our lab's trademark climate fluctuation models to study the Anopheles microbiota, uncovering how these microbial shifts reshape mosquito immunity and susceptibility to Plasmodium.
Ivy Okello, PhD
RESEARCH FELLOW / POSTDOC (MSCA/WEWIS)
Ivy earned her doctorate from Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania) and has trained at the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization and Virginia Tech (USA). Her project focuses on climate change influences on Anopheles-mycobiota interactions and mosquito innate immunity.
Bharti Goyal, PhD
RESEARCH FELLOW / POSTDOC
Bharti earned her PhD in Biological Sciences from ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research (India) in 2026. Her projects focus on using our lab's trademark climate fluctuation simulations to build macro-level climate change malaria transmission models and exploring Anopheles-Plasmodium interactions.
Tetsushi Mizuno, MD, PhD
VISITING RESEARCHER
Tetsushi is a physician-researcher and an Assistant Professor at Kanazawa University, Japan, with a PhD in Parasitology. He specializes in the development of antimalaria vaccines. His collaboration with the Simões Laboratory explores the efficacy of transmission-blocking vaccine candidates and their impact on innate immunity expression under variable environmental settings.
Yarno Valgaerts, MSc
LABORATORY TECHNICIAN
Yarno has a MSc degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is responsible for the rearing of Anopheles mosquitoes for the lab and works on projects related to climate change and Anopheles innate immunity.
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Osman Archaga Vargas, MSc
PRE-DOCTORAL CANDIDATE (Johnson & Johnson)
Osman has a BSc in Microbiology from the National Autonomous University of Honduras and an MSc in Tropical Medicine from ITM. He investigates the interplay between our trademark climate fluctuations, the Anopheles innate immunity, and the microbiome.
Bruna Ferreira Pinho, MSc
RESEARCH ASSISTANT (Inov Contacto)
Bruna has a BSc in Biotechnology and an MSc in Molecular Biomedicine from the University of Aveiro (Portugal). She investigates the impacts of climate change on Anopheles innate immunity, namely on oxidative redox pathways.
Kata Kolos, BSc student
TRAINEE
Kata’s traineeship explores the impacts of transmission-blocking candidates on Anopheles physiology and microbiota under differential environmental settings. She is a BSc student (Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology) at the IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences (Austria).
ALUMNI
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Isabel Lafuente, MSc student (Erasmus+) (2026)
Luna Dael, MSc student, Research assistant (2025/2026)
Thais Lemos-Silva, Research fellow (2024/2025)
Siem Adriaenssens, MSc student (2025)
Emma de Neef, MSc student (2024/2025)
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