Position Title
Visiting Scholar
Andressa is an Associate Professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Brazil, where she teaches veterinary medicine and mentors graduate students in the Veterinary Medicine Graduate Program. She earned her veterinary degree from the University of Passo Fundo, with an academic exchange at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and completed her master’s and doctoral degrees at Fluminense Federal University (UFF). Her graduate research focused on Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum infections in small ruminants, particularly their implications for reproductive health. She subsequently completed postdoctoral research at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), focusing on food safety and the epidemiology of zoonotic parasites.
Her research combines veterinary pathology, parasitology, and One Health approaches to investigate protozoan infections in domestic and wild animals. Her recent projects explore the transmission of T. gondii at the terrestrial–marine interface along the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, integrating animal and environmental health research with community outreach. She currently serves as President of the Brazilian Network for Toxoplasmosis Research (RedeToxo). As a research scholar in the Shapiro Lab, she will focus on land-to-sea transmission of T. gondii, expanding her expertise in parasite detection in marine animals and environmental samples and strengthening research collaborations between Brazil and the United States.