Mariana Castanheira

Dr. Mariana Castanheira was recently appointed to be the Chief Scientific Officer at JMI Laboratories. Previously, Dr. Castanheira spent two years serving as JMI’s Chief Operations Officer, during which time she oversaw all service divisions and identified opportunities to improve the organization. Now, she is broadening and promoting the company's scientific endeavors.

Dr. Castanheira is responsible for designing and overseeing antimicrobial and antifungal drug development projects, surveillance studies, and molecular projects that characterize resistance mechanisms. Dr. Castanheira is the leading author for over 100 peer-reviewed publications, presents annually at major field conferences, and maintains a global network of research collaborators.

Dr. Castanheira was an Associate Editor for Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (2008-2014) and is currently an Editor for MSphere (since 2015).

She is a member of the Editorial Board for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Microbial Drug Resistance, and Drug Resistance Updates, as well as serves as an ad hoc reviewer for many other microbiology journals.

More recently Dr. Castanheira became involved in the program committees for important international conference in Microbiology and Drug Development and is an active advisor in the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Subcommittees for Antimicrobial and Antifungal Susceptibility Testing.

Dr. Castanheira has a science degree in Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Dr. Castanheira completed her Masters in Science and Doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees for evaluating molecular epidemiology and resistance mechanisms of gram-positive and -negative bacteria at Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo (UNIFESP).

She also received training at the Department of Pathology and Microbiology of the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK) to study beta-lactamases. Dr. Castanheira built on the knowledge she gained at Bristol by dedicating the past 15 years working on discovering and characterizing genes encoding beta-lactamases and other resistance mechanisms.