Faculty
Prof. Ana Marcia de Sá Guimarães
Dr Guimaraes is a veterinarian with a Masters in Epidemiology and a PhD in Microbiology. During her academic education, Dr Guimaraes research was focused on genomics, diagnostics and host-pathogen interactions of hemotrophic mycoplasmas, a group of bacteria infecting erythrocytes of many mammalian species. She worked under Dr Jorge Timenestky (University of São Paulo – Master) and Dr Joanne Messick (Purdue University – PhD) supervision. She was the recipient of three prestigious fellowships during her PhD and post-doctoral programs: CAPES-Fulbright (U.S. Department of State and Brazilian Ministry of Education), Bilsland (Purdue University) and Young Talent (Brazilian Ministry of Science, Science without Borders Program). Over the years, Dr Guimaraes received 9 awards of research excellence, including the 2012 Graduate Student Research Award from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Purdue University. She also received two awards for contributions to the community, one from Purdue’s Presidential Forum and another from the White House. Dr Guimaraes has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and three book chapters, mainly on hemotrophic mycoplasmas and other veterinary pathogens, and more recently, on human and animal tuberculosis. Given a growing interest in global health, her research focus shifted to tuberculosis during her post-doctoral program and when launching her independent career as faculty at University of São Paulo, in which she joined in August 2016. In the Department of Microbiology at USP, Dr Guimaraes is an Assistant Professor of Medical Bacteriology and the head of LaPAM. She also coordinates the Department’s Biosafety Level 3+ Laboratory. Since 2019, Dr Guimaraes is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at Purdue University, USA.
Dr Guimaraes has a special interest in community outreach programs and science and health equity and access. She is the founder of the Young Bioscientist program, a extension project aimed at fostering scientific literacy of students from marginalized public schools of São Paulo State. The program is composed of two main axes: University-School, with university students providing hands-on workshops in schools, and scientists from our Institute providing lectures; and the School-University, with bioscience courses to school teachers, and students from public schools participating in scientific initiation projects in the laboratories of our Institute. More than 50 university students have already participated, and we have reached ~3,500 students from underprivileged, marginalized public schools, 200 school teachers and 15 school students (mainly girls) of scientific initiation projects. She also work closely with the community to promote health literacy and help health professionals to execute and build public policies. Some examples can be found here.
Education:
Veterinary Medicine, DVM, Federal University of Paraná, 2005.
Master in Experimental and Applied Epidemiology, University of São Paulo, 2008.
PhD in Microbiology, Purdue University, 2013.
Postdoctorate, University of São Paulo, 2016.
Email: anamarcia@usp.br
Lattes (CV)
Postdoctoral researchers
Suelen Andreia Rossi
Dr Rossi is a biologist with a Masters (2011) and PhD (2014) in Microbiology from State University of São Paulo (UNESP), Brazil. During her PhD he worked with antibiotic resistance and virulence of Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii. Dr Rossi is now a TT-5 fellow from FAPESP in our laboratory and is entrusted with projects involving the evaluation of zinc homeostasis in members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
Lattes (CV)
Maria Carolina del Valle Sisco Zerpa
Dr Sisco graduated from Biomedical Sciences at Universidad Central de Venezuela (2006) and received a Master in Biological Sciences from Universidad Simon Bolivar (2010) and a PhD in Microbiology from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2020). She is studying the SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies during experimental infection in hamsters as well as in breakthrough infections. She is a dual scientist working in wet lab experiments as well as bioinformatics.
Lattes (CV)
Doctorate Students
Kevim Bordignon 
Guterres
Kevim is a Pharmacist and is currently enrolled in a PhD program funded by FAPESP. His project title is: Influence of copper in the emergence of antimicrobial persistence or tolerance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium africanum.
Lattes (CV)
Camila do Nascimento Araújo
Camila is a biologist with a Masters in Microbiology. During her undergraduate studies and Masters program, she evaluated the action of herbal compounds against mycoplasmas and the relationship between mycoplasma infection and gastric cancer. She has a special interest in host-pathogen interaction and host cell signaling pathways. Her PhD project is entitled: “Comparative analysis of phagosome maturation and escape of different species of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex”, in which she is applying different cell biology techniques to study how the different members of the complex interact with and escape from the phagosome.
In her spare time she likes to explore media (games, movies, books, graphic novels, etc) with good fantasy stories and enjoys dancing classes, such as samba, forró, rockabilly and jazz (sometimes on the floor, sometimes in the air).
Lattes (CV)
Naila Cristina Soler Camargo
Naila holds a bachelor in Biotechnology. Her main research interest lays on bioinformatics and the application of networks and machine learning to understand the dynamics of diseases. Naila performed her undergraduate scientific initiation project in the laboratory and stayed for a PhD. Her project is entitled: “Genome-wide analysis of intra-patient genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated from differentially-staged human granulomas”.
Lattes (CV)
Taiana Tainá Silva Pereira
Taiana is a biologist with a Masters in Epidemiology. She completed her Masters in the laboratory in 2019. She will start her PhD in 2020. Her research focus is on bioinformatics. During her Masters, she applied bioinformatic tools to detect a case of mixed-strain infection of M. pinnipedii in a sea lion and pursued a comparative genomic analyses of the members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
Lattes (CV)
Master Students
Marina Cristina Blume
Filipe Menegatti de Melo
Developed projects on the impact of trained immunity caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection on posterior respiratory infections.
Lattes (CV)
Marcelo Valdemir Araújo
Developed projects involving the applicability of the hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 to test therapeutic and preventive measures against COVID-19.
Lattes (CV)
Antônio Francisco de Souza Filho
Project Title: “Development of an animal model of SARS-CoV-2”.
Lattes (CV)
Former Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Kerstin Muner (2019-2021) (Master’s Program)
Project title: Use, preparedness, and perception of personal protective equipment among healthcare workers at the early months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Brazil.
Lattes (CV)
Giovanni Emiddio Romano (2018-2020) (Master’s Program)
Project title: Unraveling the metabolism of Mycobacterium caprae using comparative genomics.
Lattes (CV)
Taiana Tainá Silva Pereira (2017-2019) (Master’s Program)
Project title: Sequencing, annotation and analysis of the genome of Mycobacterium pinnipedii and comparative genomics of the species of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
Lattes (CV)
Naila Cristina Soler Camargo (2017-2018) (Undergraduate Program)
Project title: Investigation of the pseudogenization rate among genomes of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
Lattes (CV)
Felipe Silva (2017-2022) (Undergraduate Program and Master’s Program)
Project titles: “Comparative analysis of mce operon expression of Mycobacterium tuberculosis during infection in human and bovine macrophages” and “Comparative study of the macrophage immune response against different species of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex”.
Cristina Kraemer Zimpel (2016-2022) (Master’s Program and PhD Program)
Project title: “Host Adaptation of Mycobacterium bovis: genome-wide and transcriptional analyses”. Dr Zimpel won the best PhD thesis award in veterinary medicine in Brazil, 2023 (CAPES).