Professor Maria Mota

Professor Maria Mota is the Executive Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), Lisbon, and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon. She is also Visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Professor Mota graduated in Biology and with a Master’s in Immunology from the University of Porto. Following a PhD at University College London, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at New York University Medical School. Professor Mota’s research focuses on the interactions between liver stage malaria parasites and their host and has led to several landmark papers in Nature Medicine, PNAS, PLoS Pathogens, amongst others, on the identification of host molecules that dictate resistance or susceptibility to severe malaria. Professor Mota is the recipient of many awards and prizes including the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Young Investigator Award in 2003, the European Young Investigator Award of the European Science Foundation in 2004 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholarship (2005-2010). In May 2016 she was elected as an EMBO member. At the national level, she received the Persona Award in 2013, and was awarded the Order of Prince Henry the Second by the President of the Republic on International Women's Day 2005.