Robert McCann
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Malawi has one of the highest malaria burdens in the world, even though bed nets and other standard tools have been widely used for two decades. One reason the parasite keeps spreading may be that the mosquitoes carrying it are not all alike.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Ecology & Evolution
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
malaria
Plasmodium falciparum
Anopheles funestus
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Measure how readily the two main Malawian malaria mosquitoes, Anopheles funestus and Anopheles arabiensis, become infected with Plasmodium falciparum, using membrane feeding assays with field-collected mosquitoes.
- Test how species differences in mosquito susceptibility to infection change the effectiveness of malaria interventions, using an agent-based stochastic model that simulates individual people and mosquitoes.
- Determine how geographic distance relates to genetic relatedness among African malaria mosquito populations, using geospatially informed bioinformatics tools to estimate migration patterns.
More about the research
Different species, and different populations within a species, may vary in how easily they become infected and in how they move across the landscape. These differences could change how well malaria interventions work. This project combines field mosquito collections, laboratory infection experiments and computer modeling to fill these gaps.
Why it matters
Malaria remains a leading cause of illness and death in Malawi despite widespread control efforts. Knowing which mosquito species transmit the parasite most efficiently, and how mosquito populations spread across Africa, could help health programs choose and target interventions more effectively. The results may inform malaria control strategies in Malawi and other countries where the disease is common.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ross Boyce
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine the feasibility and acceptability of focal mass drug administration with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DP) for household members of pregnant women, through a three-arm randomized pilot at a rural Ugandan health center.
Jessica Lin
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether primaquine failures in a Thai Plasmodium vivax relapse trial were driven by a high burden of hypnozoites, dormant liver-stage parasites, using molecular inversion probe sequencing to detect circulating variants and gauge infection complexity.
Alun Lloyd
North Carolina State University, NC·Mathematics & Statistics
Measure how residents of Ibagué, Colombia differ in adopting mosquito-prevention behaviors around the home, such as water container management, and identify the cues that drive them, using observational and experimental social science methods.
The school
University of Maryland, Baltimore: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 79 research doctorates a year.
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