Maria Manuel Mota

Maria Manuel Mota graduated in Biology and obtained her Master's degree in Immunology from the Porto University. In 1998 she got her PhD in Molecular Parasitology from University College London in the United Kingdom.
Maria M. Mota developed research as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Prof. Vitor Nussenzweig of New York University Medical School in the United States and taught at the same medical school. She returned to Portugal in 2002, where she led her research group at the Malaria Cell Biology Laboratory, Gulbenkian Institute of Science, in Oeiras, and became a principal researcher at the Malaria Unit at iMM in 2005, in addition to teaching at Lisbon School of Medicine. Maria M. Mota is currently Executive Director of iMM and Visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States.
Her work in the field of malaria focuses on the study of both phases of infection (hepatic, blood) by Plasmodium, the malaria-causing parasite, in the human host.
Maria M. Mota won the EMBO Young Investigator Award in 2003, the European Young Investigator Award from the European Science Foundation in 2004, and was an international researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA) between 2005 and 2010. In May 2016 she was elected to join the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). In 2017 she received the Pfizer Award and in 2018 the Sanofi Award – Institut Pasteur - Mid-Career category.
In Portugal she was awarded by the President of the Republic with the Order of Infante D. Henrique in 2005 and was awarded the Pessoa Prize in 2013. In 2019 she received the Dona Antónia-Consecration Career Award.
Maria Manuel Mota is an active voice for women's rights and equity of opportunities in education. She currently has a monthly opinion column in Expresso newspaper, as a contribution to achieving her dream of living in a knowledge-centric society.