MMI’s Monica Mugnier Promoted to Associate Professor

Monica Mugnier, PhD, a faculty member in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology has been promoted to Associate Professor.

Mugnier uses high-throughput approaches to understand the biology of trypanosomes, parasites that cause Chagas disease in Latin America and African Sleeping Sickness in sub-Saharan Africa.

Born and raised in Audobon, New Jersey, Mugnier earned a PhD in Biomedical Science from Rockefeller University. She worked in Nina Papavasiliou's lab, where she developed VSG-seq, an approach for studying immune evasion by the sleeping sickness parasite Trypanosoma brucei. At the Bloomberg School, she has used this approach to understand immune evasion during natural T. brucei infections, showing that the parasite’s antigenic repertoire is more rapidly evolving than previously thought. Her work has also shown that extravascular T. brucei parasites, which reside in host tissues, are critical for immune evasion during infection. In addition to her work on T. brucei, she is investigating the biology of the Chagas disease parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, in collaboration with Professor Robert Gilman in the Bloomberg School's Department of International Health.  

Mugnier has published 20 research articles and reviews in journals including Science. 

Mugnier joined the Bloomberg School as assistant professor in 2016, the same year the Mugnier Lab was established.