More than 500,000 people die from malaria every year, mainly children below five. The infectious disease can cause severe damage to the brain, placenta, and other organs, often resulting in death. The research group “Vascular Infections”, led by Dr. Viola Introini, aims to understand how malaria parasites invade red blood cells and clog blood vessels. Introini focuses on investigating the mechanical forces which act during the invasion and adhesion of parasites to blood vessels. She is also researching the genetic adaptations which provide protection against malaria and the influence of host factors such as fever and specific tissue environments. To this end, Introini’s team is developing physiologically relevant in vitro vascular models to understand malaria mechanisms of infection in a controlled setting.

About Dr. Viola Introini 

Viola Introini studied physics at the University of Pavia, Italy, and obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2020 under Prof. Pietro Cicuta, where she investigated how red blood cell mechanics and human genetic traits protect against malaria. Her thesis was awarded the prestigious “Giuseppe Bassani” Prize by the Italian Physical Society.

She joined Cambridge Institute for Medical Research as a Wellcome Trust Interdisciplinary Fellow, applying gene editing to investigate malaria parasite invasion. In 2022, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at EMBL Barcelona, where she used a 3D brain microvessel model to study malaria pathogenesis and screen for antibodies against severe malaria.

Since July 2025, Dr. Introini has led her own independent group at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM) in Erlangen, Germany. Her lab develops next-generation in vitro neurovascular models to investigate how mechanical forces and tissue environments influence malaria and other vascular diseases, fostering collaborations with medical institutions in Erlangen and internationally.