NATIONAL SPEAKER

Dr Melanie Dietrich is a mid-career researcher who was awarded her PhD at the University of Tuebingen. She is a structural biologist interested in host-pathogen interactions and how antibodies inhibit infection in both viruses and malaria parasites. In the last five years, Melanie has elucidated the structural biology of the 6-cysteine proteins which are a family of surface-expressed proteins involved in infection and immune evasion in malaria parasites.

Melanie’s current research uses integrative structural biology approaches, including X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, and biophysical techniques to study endogenous protein complexes involved in malaria parasite fertilisation. Her work aims to understand structural mechanisms of inhibitory antibodies and nanobodies to develop novel therapeutical tools to block malaria parasite transmission.