Ayman Khattab is an adjunct professor of parasitology at the University of Helsinki with over 20 years of experience in malaria research. He joined the University in 2007 to set up a malaria research lab. The lab maintains the malaria parasite, P. falciparum, cultures and Anopheles mosquito’s colonies as tools to understand malaria pathogenesis and to develop novel interventions to control malaria transmission. Specifically, Ayman focusses his research on 1) Novel mosquito vector control strategies, 2) The immune interaction between mosquitoes and the human host, 3) Complement escape by the P. falciparum parasite and 4) The surface antigens of P. falciparum as virulence factors.

Ayman obtained his PhD in 2003 from the University of Tübingen, Germany. He conducted his PhD work at the Institute for Tropical Medicine, University of Tübingen and the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Lambaréné, Gabon where he studied the pathogenesis of placental malaria. Between late 2003 and mid-2007, Ayman did his post-doctoral research at Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany.