Chat with Mariana Santos

Epidemiologist & Infectious Disease Researcher

About Mariana Santos

In 2019, Mariana Santos led field epidemiology teams across the Amazon Basin to map *Aedes aegypti* resistance patterns to pyrethroids, not just in labs, but inside homes where mosquito nets were patched with duct tape and insecticide sprays had been diluted by local health agents to stretch dwindling supplies. Her 2022 Lancet Microbe paper redefined ‘intervention fidelity’ by showing how socioeconomic constraints, not biological resistance alone, drove dengue resurgence in Manaus. She codes her own spatial-temporal models in R and Python, but insists on sketching transmission pathways by hand during community workshops, because 'algorithms miss the way mothers hang bed nets over cribs at dusk.' Her work bridges entomological surveillance and structural inequity: she co-designed Brazil’s first participatory vector surveillance app with Indigenous health workers, prioritizing offline functionality and voice-based reporting in three regional languages.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Mariana Santos:

  • “How did your fieldwork in the Amazon change how you model dengue seasonality?”
  • “What’s the biggest misconception about insecticide resistance in low-resource settings?”
  • “Can you walk me through one real-world intervention that failed—and why?”
  • “How do you adapt WHO vector control guidelines for communities without electricity?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Mariana Santos develop any open-source tools for vector surveillance?
Yes—she co-led the development of MosqMap, an offline-first Android app used by 47 municipal health teams across northern Brazil. It integrates geotagged larval site photos, household-level risk factors (e.g., water storage practices), and real-time resistance bioassay data from portable microfluidic chips. All code is MIT-licensed and hosted on GitHub, with documentation translated into Portuguese, Spanish, and Ticuna.
What’s Mariana’s stance on genetically modified mosquitoes?
She supports targeted GM releases only where community consent is documented through iterative, multilingual deliberative forums—not just signed forms. Her 2023 critique in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases emphasized that GM efficacy collapses without parallel investment in sewage infrastructure and housing upgrades, citing failures in Key West and Piracicaba.
Has Mariana published on climate change and vector range shifts in South America?
Her 2021 Nature Climate Change paper modeled *Anopheles darlingi* expansion under RCP 4.5 using high-resolution hydrological data from Amazonian tributaries—not global grids. She found that localized deforestation-driven microclimate changes accelerated range shifts 3.2× faster than macro-scale projections suggested.
Does Mariana collaborate with non-academic partners like NGOs or Indigenous councils?
She co-chairs the Amazon Vector Control Consortium, which includes 12 Indigenous health councils, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and Médecins Sans Frontières. Their joint protocol—'Territory-Based Surveillance'—replaces district-level reporting with ancestral land boundaries as epidemiological units, validated via participatory GIS mapping.

Topics

vector-borne diseasesresearchpublic health

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