My research centers on human malaria transmission, vector-parasite interactions, the molecular and cellular mechanisms of the mosquito innate immunity response against Plasmodium infection, and genetic vector transmission-blocking strategies for malaria. 

My main scientific achievements in the field are, so far:

1) Engineering CTL4null mosquitoes that exhibit high levels of refractoriness to malaria parasites through melanization (Simoes et al. 2022 PLoS Biology)

2) Using anti-Plasmodium endogenous and exogenous transgenes to achieve refractoriness to malaria (Dong, Simoes & Dimopoulos 2020 Science Advances) 

3) Presenting a novel CRISPR/Cas9-based methodology to target host factors in A. gambiae (Dong, Simoes, Marois & Dimopoulos 2018 PLoS Pathogens)

4) Showing functional diversity of immune factors and explaining CTL4-influenced melanization of Plasmodium (Simoes et al. 2017 mBIO)

5) Engineering Anopheles with antagonist overexpression (Simoes et al. 2017 Developmental and Comparative Immunology)