Research

My graduate projects both focused on fish parasites, specifically myxozoans and monogeneans. During my Ph.D. I spent 9 months at the Natural History Museum of London, supervised by Dr. Timothy Littlewood, working on parasite mitochondrial genomes. I had a post-doctoral fellowship at the State University of São Paulo, Brazil (2013-2017), and researched taxonomy and molecular phylogeny of parasites from fishes, amphibians and reptiles from several regions in Brazil. Currently,

I am undertaking a post-doctorate at Federal University of Sao Paulo (2018–), where I am continuing to explore the taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships of myxozoan parasites from freshwater stingrays and other fishes from the Amazon. In 2022 I am a visiting scholar at OSU, in the Bartholomew Lab, working with Dr. Stephen Atkinson to investigate transcriptomes of myxozoans from the Amazon, searching for the motility and biomineralization genes that underpin some of the unique adaptations of these parasites.

Background

Education

Ph.D. in Parasitology, Sao Paulo State, Brazil