Dr. Manuela Verastegui, Biologist, MSc, PhD. She is a Principal Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Science from Science and Philosophy Faculty at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Lima. Peru). She is a Research Associate at NGO PRISMA in Lima, Peru. She did her PhD in International Health at Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health and my Master degree in Microbiology at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. She has been working in Public Health for more than 25 years, mainly with endemic parasites in Peru. Most of her research has been done in Taenia solium, Cyclospora cayetanensis, Echinococcus granulosus, Trypanosoma cruzi, Norovirus, among others infectious and tropical diseases in Peru. In the last five years, she have begun to study infectious diseases that affect the central nervous system as neurocysticercosis and toxoplasmosis. She developed the first animal model using rat to study the neurocysticercosis. The advantage of the model is that the infected animals develop epilepsy, and neuroinflammation as observed in humans. Also the model allows us to study the epileptogenesis, pathogenesis of the disease and to investigate different therapeutic system.

Dr. Manuela Verastegui’s interest is to understand what mechanisms are mediating the neuroinflammation and the association with the blood brain barrier permeability and epilepsy in neuroinfectious disease.