Dr. Mann, a graduate - MSP and PhD degrees - of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, completed post doctoral training at the NIAID's Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland. She has held scientific appointments at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia and Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Mann's doctoral dissertation dealt with transcription in African trypanosomes and her postdoc studies with cell biology of trypanosomatid and malaria. She is expert in cell and molecular biology of protozoan, helminth and viral pathogens, and is active in mentoring the graduate studies in this laboratory.
The research in Dr. Mann's (and Brindley's) laboratory deals with neglected tropical diseases. Specifically, Dr. Mann is undertaking molecular biological investigations dealing with development of tools for functional genomics of schistosomes. These studies include development retroviral constructs to transfer report genes into cultured schistosomes. In addition, she is carrying out studies dealing with the food borne fluke, Opisthorchis viverrini, an enigmatic helminth parasite that causes bile duct cancer in many chronically infected persons. (Opisthorchiasis is endemic in Thailand and Laos.) Current research is our lab focuses on expression of prospective vaccine candidate gene of O. viverrini, and on molecular carcinogenesis studies of O. viverrini antigens.