National Malaria Control Program (PNLP) Coordinator
Chief of Agua Grande Health District / UCMI Project Consultant
Dr. João Pinto is Assistant Professor and Head of the Medical Entomology Unit of the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. His research interests focus on the bioecology and genetics of mosquito vectors of disease with emphasis on Afrotropical malaria vectors. He has over 20 years of experience conducting field work and training actions in Africa. Dr. Pinto will lead field operations on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, participating in field collections and implementing training and capacity building activities.
Ms. Ana Kormos received her Master of Public Health at University of California, Davis. She has more than 12 years of experience working in executive leadership roles for community health centers and has led system-wide transformation of care delivery using the relationship-based model. She has experience in development and implementation of community engagement programs in rural, underserved communities in the United States and in Mexico. She is the UCMI Program Administrator.
Dr. Anthony Cornel is a Medical Entomologist and a Professor for the Department of Entomology in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at University of California, Davis. He received his master’s degree and PhD in South Africa where his studies focused on African arboviruses and their mosquito vectors. His areas of expertise include mosquito cytogenetics, ecology, genomics, systematics, and population biology, with a particular emphasis on field ecology. He has over 30 years of field experience working in Africa and will be leading studies of mosquito ecology at the UCMI field sites.
Dr. John Marshall is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD in biomathematics from UCLA writing his dissertation on the use of GM mosquitoes to control malaria. He worked on the social and regulatory issues of this project at the Malaria Research and Training Center in Mali, molecular biology at Caltech, and infectious disease modeling at Imperial College London, prior to joining UC Berkeley. His current research focuses on the use of mathematical models to support efforts to control and eliminate mosquito-borne diseases.
Dr. George Dimopoulos is a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. He serves as deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute and director of its Parasitology Core facility. Dr. Dimopoulos has developed pathogen resistant mosquitoes based on genetic engineering of the mosquito’s immune system, and CRISPR/CAS9-based disruption of pathogen host factor.
Dr. Ethan Bier is an Allen Distinguished professor in the section of Cell and Developmental Biology at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School where he studied regulation of immune genes and did his postdoctoral studies at UCSD on the development of the nervous system. Dr. Bier was a pioneer in developing the CRISPR-Cas9 based Gene Drive system, initially in Drosophila, and subsequently in mosquitoes, in partnership with Dr. James.
Dr. Gregory C. Lanzaro is a Professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and the founder and chief of the Vector Genetics Laboratory at University of California, Davis. He has over 35 years’ experience in the field of medical entomology, with a focus on vector population genetics. Dr. Lanzaro has extensive field experience in Africa and his role in the UCMI project is to lead the effort in conducting field trials to evaluate the performance of genetically engineered mosquitoes, and to determine their efficacy in eliminating malaria.
Dr. Anthony A. James is the principal investigator of the research group at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He is a Donald Bren and Distinguished Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics (School of Medicine) and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry (School of Biological Sciences), and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). An alumnus of UCI, he did postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and Brandeis University. His research group is recognized widely for its contributions to molecular biological investigations of mosquitoes and the development of genetic approaches to controlling vector-borne diseases. Their work for UCMI involves the development of engineered genes that interfere with malaria parasite development in mosquitoes coupled with gene-drive systems as part of a population modification control strategy.