Mara Lawniczak

Dr. Mara Lawniczak is a Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where she leads the Lawniczak Group focused on evolutionary genetics, with an Honorary Faculty appointment at Imperial College London. Her research spans three major themes: Mosquito Vector Population Genomics, Transmission biology of Plasmodium falciparum, and Biodiversity Genomics, all aimed at building genomic resources that deliver impact in malaria control while advancing evolutionary understanding.

Lawniczak completed her PhD in Population Biology at UCDavis studying sexual conflict in Drosophila, followed by postdoctoral work at University College London on seminal fluid proteins and later at Imperial College London on Anopheles mosquitoes. In 2012, she received an MRC Career Development Fellowship and established her research group at the Sanger Institute in 2014.

Her research interests include evolutionary genetics, speciation, biodiversity, vector population genomics, and single cell transcriptomics. She has established the Malaria Cell Atlas (an interactive single-cell transcriptomic resource across the malaria parasite lifecycle), the Anopheles funestus population genomics project, the Anopheles Reference Genomes project, the ANOSPP project, and the BIOSCAN UK project. Her work employs genomic tools ranging from whole genome sequencing to single cell RNAseq to DNA barcoding.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on mosquito vector diversity, malaria parasite biology, and biodiversity genomics. Her team has produced high-quality reference genomes for multiple mosquito species, developed tools for species identification, and created single-cell atlases of both mosquito vectors and malaria parasites to understand transmission dynamics.

• Featured as a 'hero in the field' by Bill Gates (2023)
• MRC Career Development Fellowship (2012)
• Associate editor at GENETICS

Dr. Lawniczak currently holds grants from MRC, Wellcome, UKRI, Horizon Europe, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She mentors multiple students and postdoctoral fellows, and is heavily involved in the Darwin Tree of Life Project and BIOSCAN initiative to study UK insect biodiversity through DNA barcoding of 1 million insects collected over five years.