Background: Mara completed her PhD in Population Biology at UCDavis studying the female side of sexual conflict and arms race dynamics in Drosophila in the lab of David Begun. Continuing to work on this study system, she moved to Tracey Chapman’s lab in London for a postdoc where she generated transgenic flies lacking seminal fluid proteins and studied fitness consequences of these losses. She took a year away from science after this postdoc and then returned to London for another postdoc with Fotis Kafatos and George Christophides at Imperial College London, where she switched to working on Anopheles mosquitoes. In 2012 she was awarded an MRC Career Development Fellowship and in 2014 she moved to Sanger to form her group focused on vector population genomics.
Since joining Sanger, she has established and led the Malaria Cell Atlas project, the Anopheles funestus population genomics project, the Anopheles Reference Genomes project, the ANOSPP project, and the BIOSCAN UK project. In 2023, Mara was featured as a “hero in the field” by Bill Gates. Mara is an associate editor at GENETICS and she currently holds grants from MRC, Wellcome, UKRI, Horizon Europe, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
My timeline
Promoted to Senior Group Leader
Moved to the Sanger Institute as a Group Leader, became Honorary Faculty at Imperial College London
Awarded a proleptic lectureship at Imperial College London
Awarded an MRC Career Development Award and established new group at Imperial College London
Completed Postdoc at Imperial College London with Fotis Kafatos and George Christophides on Anopheles and Plasmodium interactions
Completed Postdoc at University College London with Tracey Chapman on seminal fluid proteins in Drosophila
Completed PhD in Population Biology from UCDavis with David Begun on the molecular population genetics of the female side of sexual conflict in Drosophila