PhD Mariana Galvao Ferrarini

I am deeply interested in symbiosis and computational modeling in a wide range of model species. My research focuses on understanding the delicate balance within biological communities and the complex interactions between living organisms. I completed a joint PhD in Bioinformatics from the University Claude Bernard Lyon (UCBL), France, and Molecular and Cell Biology from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil and my doctoral work centered on the computational modeling of bacterial metabolism in three swine-associated bacteria with varying levels of pathogenicity.

Following my PhD, I advanced my research as a postdoctoral fellow (INSA-Lyon, in France and Fiocruz, in Brazil) and as an early-career researcher (at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, in France). During this time, I focused on integrating diverse omics datasets to unravel the intricate relationships between insects and their microbial partners, as well as protozoan parasites and their hosts.

Currently, my group at the Insect Symbiosis department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology investigates the conservation and evolution of metabolism and virulence through a combination of computational biology and molecular and cell biology, focusing on insect hosts and their bacterial counterparts.