Mariana De Niz
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Biosketch
Mariana De Niz was born in Mexico City. She obtained her BSc(Hons) in Immunology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland in 2006. In 2010 she then went on to do an MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the lab of Prof. Chris Drakeley, where she studied genetic polymorphisms in humans that are protective of Plasmodium infections, and their relevance to mass drug administration. In late 2011 she was awarded a fellowship by EVIMalaR/EMBO, and joined the lab of Prof. Volker Heussler at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where she completed her PhD in Cell Biology in 2016, on Protein transport export conservation among human and Plasmodium-infective species, and their role in sequestration in vivo.
Mariana then obtained an SNSF and an EMBO fellowship to do her first postdoc in Prof. Matthias Marti’s lab at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and later at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology in Glasgow, studying mechanisms of Plasmodium gametocyte migration in vivo and their entry to the bone marrow. In late 2018 Mariana joined the lab of Dr. Luisa Figueiredo at the Institute of Molecular Parasitology in Lisbon to investigate Trypanosoma brucei interactions with the host vasculature during reservoir establishment in rodent hosts, with a Human Frontier Science fellowship.
Mariana joined the lab of Prof. Philippe Bastin in August 2021 to investigate intraflagellar transport trains in Trypanosoma brucei and expand her expertise in microscopy, to electron microscopy.
Testimony
My experience at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular was the best in my career as a scientist. I found in Portugal very kind-hearted and welcoming people, and iMM was no exception. As a scientist I first got exposed to the field of Trypanosoma brucei in the lab of Dr. Luisa Figueiredo. The three main highlights for me after working at iMM were the following:
A) Having worked as a microscopist for over 12 years in several research platforms across the world (Switzerland, USA, UK, Germany), the best one for me was at iMM, where the members of the Bioimaging platform staff were the most helpful colleagues I have worked with, being always available and always keen to share their expertise, going truly above and beyond. This was extraordinary.
B) As a young woman in science, I had never worked in a country so committed to gender balance in positions of leadership. My time at iMM was invaluable for this reason, and most importantly for having allowed me to work with a great leader directly. This has had great impact for my aims and expectations of myself as (hopefully) a future group leader.
C) I enjoyed a greatly collaborative spirit at iMM: I worked on a project that joined the expertise of several labs and platforms, allowing us to do wonderful science.
Personally, the three main highlights of my time at iMM are: A) I had wonderful colleagues both in the Figueiredo lab, and within iMM – the parasitology, vascular biology, and imaging communities were truly a pleasure to work with. B) In Luisa Figueiredo I found a great leader who also went above and beyond both as a scientist and as a person. In various ways, among the various group leaders I have worked with, she is the one who was most committed to inclusion, diversity and equity. C) I found the commitment of iMM to scientific outreach, not only inspiring, but also groundbreaking and absolutely necessary in the future of science and its link to the general population.
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