We heard from one of the great pioneers...

Professor Andrea Crisanti - Professor of Molecular Parasitology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences

Andrea Crisanti is Professor of molecular parasitology at Imperial College, graduated in Medicine at the University of Rome "la Sapienza' and carried his doctoral work at the Basel Institute for Immunology. Thereafter he worked as postdoctoral fellow at the Centre of Molecular Biology of the University of Heidelberg.

More recently, on leave from Imperial College, he was appointed Director of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padova and Director of the Microbiology Diagnostic Unit of the University Hospital.

Since November 2022 he returned to Imperial College on a part time open-ended appointment. Professor Crisanti has pioneered the molecular biology of the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae and has made a number of important scientific contributions that advanced the genetic and molecular knowledge of the malaria parasite and its mosquito vector.

These include: i) the identification of the molecules involved in mosquito gut meal digestion; ii) the characterization of key genes involved in plasmodium molecular motor; iii) the development of gene transfer technology for anopheline mosquitoes; iv) the establishment of gene drive technology in mosquitoes; and v) the development of synthetic sex distorter producing male only progeny.

While working at the University of Padova he played a major role in coordinating the early response against the Covid pandemic in Northern East Italy.