Francisco Ferreira
Title: Post Doc 
Phone: (848) 932-6497
Email Address francisco.ferreira@rutgers.edu or franciscocarlosfj@gmail.com
Postal Address Sebs - Entomology/Center for Vector Biology
180 Jones Ave. 08901
New Brunswick, NJ
Francisco Ferreira, DVM, MS, PhD is a Research Fellow in the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology (Department of Entomology) and a staff scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Dr. Ferreira joined Rutgers University on March 2019 to work on a NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases funded project under the supervision of Dr. Dina Fonseca.
Dr. Ferreira is a veterinarian graduated at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where he also obtained his Masters in Preventive Veterinary Medicine and his PhD in Parasitology. He is interested in wild animal medicine and conservation under captive and free-living conditions and has participated in many projects involving Brazilian endangered species. In the past 10 years, his research has focused on parasitic and other infectious diseases of wild birds. During his PhD, Dr. Ferreira was in Nihon University, Japan, for 10 months to conduct field and laboratory experiments with avian malaria parasites and their mosquito vectors, the main subject of his thesis. After working with avian malaria vectors, Dr. Ferreira got deeply interested in vector-borne diseases in general.
Dr. Ferreira is currently working with Dr. Fonseca on the avian malaria system that has dramatically impacted the Hawaiian birds such as the Honeycreepers for many decades. Their research is addressing the genetic background and transcriptomic responses of Culex quinquefasciatus, the disease vector, when in contact with the Plasmodium parasite they transmit. By comparing mosquito populations from Hawaii with populations from other parts of the globe, the goal of this NSF project is to pinpoint genetic signatures that may be involved in vector competence or refractoriness.
