Maria Tays Mendes

Maria Tays Mendes holds a degree in Biomedicine from the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro (UFTM), where she began her research career in microbiology and parasitology. In 2014, she earned a Masters degree in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, with a focus on Immunology and Parasitology, also from UFTM. In the same year, she was awarded a scholarship from the Science Without Borders program and joined the Ph.D. program in Biological Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), USA, where she investigated the composition of saliva from disease-transmitting vectors and its impact on the host immune response, using mass spectrometry techniques. From 2020 to 2023, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she studied the neuroimmune interaction at the tick bite site, focusing on the release of neuropeptides and cytokines and their impact on the host inflammatory response. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP), studying the parasite-host interaction in the context of cutaneous leishmaniasis, with an emphasis on the immunomodulatory mechanisms mediated by keratinocytes. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)