Malvina Pizzuto, PhD

I am a Group Leader at the Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina "López Neyra" (IPBLN-CSIC) in Granada, Spain, working at the intersection of lipid biology, innate immunity, and disease. My lab focuses on cardiolipin (CL), a mitochondrial phospholipid whose roles in immunity and disease we are actively uncovering.

I am currently looking for talented postdoctoral researchers who want to explore this space with me, and I would also be very happy to join ongoing Doctoral Networks as a partner.

Our work is grounded in the finding that CL directly interfaces with TLRs, inflammasomes, and caspases — the core machinery that decides whether a cell lives, dies, or raises the inflammatory alarm. Building from this, we are now exploring a wide landscape of open questions. CL may play important roles in mitochondrial immune signalling, and its dysregulation could be part of what goes wrong in mitochondrial diseases, inflammatory disorders like IBD, MS and RA, and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. On the microbial side, bacteria may use their own CL to evade or manipulate the host immune system, raising fascinating and largely unanswered questions in bacterial infection and host–pathogen interaction. These are hypotheses worth pursuing, with potential implications ranging from basic immune regulation to novel therapeutic targets.

Our methods span fluorescence and live microscopy, lipidomics, cell death and inflammasome assays, cell signalling, gene editing, ELISA/multiplex, Western blot, cell fractionation, bacteria manipulation, among others.

I am looking for postdoctoral candidates who are eligible for an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship and who have identified their own research questions within our shared areas of interest, and developed a rigorous and well-reasoned experimental design. Their expertise must complement mine, enabling the two-way knowledge exchange required by MSCA. Candidates must take ownership of the writing and application process, while I will provide full support and mentorship throughout. Candidates are also expected to embrace honesty, equity, diversity and inclusion principles, and to contribute to a supportive and respectful team environment.

We are located at the IPBLN/CSIC in Granada, Spain.

The IPBLN is an exceptional place to do this work. It’s a genuinely multidisciplinary, cutting-edge institute with deep expertise across parasitology, immunology, genomics, and structural biology, all under one roof and in constant conversation. The science here is excellent, the collaborations are real, and the environment is one where ambitious questions get asked.

And Granada is a city of extraordinary beauty, remarkable history, and a quality of life that is genuinely hard to beat. The Alhambra at sunset, the Sierra Nevada an hour away, a thriving scientific community, and some of the best tapas in Spain. If you are thinking about where to build the next chapter of your career, Granada makes the decision easier.

About me:

My path to leading a research group has been deliberately international. I trained and worked across Italy, Belgium, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Spain, a journey that shaped not just my science but how I think about collaboration, mentorship, and building a lab culture. My most recent position before establishing my group was at the University of Cambridge.

I have been fortunate to learn from some outstanding scientists. Working with Prof. Pablo Pelegrín, Prof. Kate Schroder, and Prof. Clare Bryant was formative. They taught me what rigorous, creative science looks like in practice, how to ask the right questions, and how to build environments where people thrive. I am proud to maintain active collaborations with them and with many others, and I benefit from an extensive international network that I am always happy to share with the people in my group.

Beyond the bench, I care deeply about equity, diversity and inclusion. I believe science is more fun, more creative and more robust when it draws from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. I am also committed to public engagement and science communication: research funded by society should speak to society, and making our work accessible and meaningful to people outside academia is a priority for me.

I am an active mentor, both formally and informally, and I find that part of the job genuinely rewarding. Watching early-career researchers find their confidence, develop their ideas, and grow into independent scientists is one of the best parts of this role.