[Communiqué]

As part of the actions of the Health Innovation Plan 2030, the health component of the France 2030 plan, Mohamed-Ali Hakimi is one of the 22 laureates of an Excellence Chair in Biology/Health, supported to conduct high-level research projects in France.

The ToxoNeoSex project, "Epigenetically Reprogrammed Sexual Stages: An Animal-Free Model to Study Zoonotic Transmission of Endemic Parasites and their Species Barrier," aims at a comprehensive understanding of toxoplasmosis using in vitro cultures.

The Excellence Chair in Biology/Health program aims to support the work of highly talented researchers in France. Endowed with funding ranging from 2 to 3 million euros each, these chairs will enable the conduct of new large-scale projects in our territory, over a duration of 5 years.

More details on the website of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and in the press kit.

[Communiqué]

Congratulations to Arthur Talman, IRD Research Leader in the MIVEGEC laboratory (Montpellier), who has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the project "TROJAN - Molecular mimicry and immune evasion in malaria parasites ".

For this project, the team will be looking for a parasitologist, an immunologist and a computational biologist.

Ana Rita Gomes, a CNRS Research Associate at the Laboratory of Pathogens and Host Immunity in Montpellier, and former Postdoctoral fellow of the LabEx ParaFrap, has been awarded the prestigious CNRS Bronze Medal in 2023.

This esteemed recognition highlights her exceptional contributions to the field of Parasitology and her dedication to advancing our understanding of pathogens. This Bronze Medal, awarded by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), is highly esteemed within the scientific community. It aims to honor early-career researchers and serves as an encouragement from CNRS to continue well-established and fruitful research in their respective fields. Ana Rita's receipt of this medal highlights her significant impact and potential as a scientist.

Ana Rita Gomes' research utilizes omics approaches to explore DNA replication and cell cycle regulation in malaria-causing parasites. With a background in microbiology, she pursued her doctoral program at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge (United Kingdom) under the supervision of Oliver Billker, where she studied the functional genetics of the malaria parasite (2010-2015). During this time, she developed large-scale reverse genetic screening technologies, paving the way for high-throughput malaria research. As a postdoc, she continued to develop this technology at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Imperial College London. In 2015, she relocated to Montpellier and initiated a new research line focusing on DNA biology in Plasmodium in Dr. Jose-Juan LOPEZ-RUBIO's team (ParaFrap fellowship). She was subsequently recruited by CNRS as a CRCN (Chargée de recherche de classe normale) at the end of December 2018, joining the LPHI unit in Montpellier. Her group was initially funded by a starting grant ANR JCJC (2020-2024) and i-SITE MUSE (2021-2023). Ana Rita is also the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant 2023.

By honoring Ana Rita Batista Gomes with the CNRS Bronze Medal, the scientific community not only recognizes her past achievements but also eagerly anticipates the discoveries to come in her promising career.

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Happy New Year 2024! To kick off this new scientific year, here is the ParaFrap webinar schedule.

Since January 2021, ParaFrap has been organizing a series of webinars. This monthly event, held every 2nd Thursday of the month, aims to strengthen cohesion within the consortium and share the latest advances in the Parasitology community.

Open to all, these webinars allow ParaFrap members to present their research activities, and participants to ask questions.

To subscribe to the mailing list and receive invitations for each webinar and news from ParaFrap, register via this form. We look forward to your participation.

Sign up for monthly webinars