Julius Hafalla obtained his BSc in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines – Diliman. He then worked as a Research Assistant at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (Philippines) and as a Fogarty Fellow at the International Health Institute of Brown University (USA). Julius obtained his MSc and PhD in Basic Medical Sciences at New York University (USA), where he investigated the development of T cell responses to malaria liver stage infection. He also did post-doctoral work in parasitology, immunology and pre-clinical vaccine development at New York University.

In 2005, Julius joined the LSHTM as a Royal Society Incoming Fellow to study the regulation of pathogenic responses during blood stage malaria infections, and as a Wellcome Trust Visiting Fellow in Public Health and Tropical Medicine to examine cellular immune responses to malaria in Thailand and Tanzania. In 2008, Julius was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, which was renewed in 2013. He was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Immunology in 2013, and an Associate Professor in 2015.

Since 2015, Julius has been facilitating the LSHTM’s external partnerships with institutions in the Philippines and other countries in South East Asia. He is currently a faculty of the Joint PhD Programme in Global Health between LSHTM and Nagasaki University, Japan, and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana.