Elena Levashina, PhD

Head of the Vector Biology Unit

Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology 

Dr. Elena Levashina received her Ph.D. in Plant Genetics from the University of St. Petersburg, Russia. Her education background includes studies on Drosophila immunity at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC), Strasbourg, France, and on mosquito immunity at the EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany. She is currently leading the Vector Biology Unit at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. Her work has contributed greatly to the understanding of mosquito immune responses to malaria parasites and other pathogens. Currently, the Vector Biology Unit combines molecular, cellular, organismal, population biology and mathematical approaches to disentangle complex interactions that ultimately make a mosquito such a formidable vector of malaria.