Glaucia Cota joined DNDi in June 2023 as Head of Visceral Leishmaniasis Clinical Programme.

Glaucia is a Brazilian medical doctor specialized in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine. During her Masters in Tropical Medicine at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Glaucia has assessed the impact of oxaminiquine mass treatment on the morbidity of schistosomiasis in an endemic area in Brazil. Leishmaniasis became her main line of research during the PhD program at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), mainly focused on a prospective cohort study of patients with visceral leishmaniasis associated with immunocompromissed conditions, such as HIV co-infection and solid organs transplantation.

Recently, Glaucia was acting as public health researcher at the Instituto René Rachou (IRR) in FIOCRUZ, Minas Gerais, Brazil, dedicated to the development of diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to improve the lives of people with cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis. She lead the research group ‘Clinical Studies and Public Policies in Infectious Diseases’, and was Medical Coordinator of the Regional Reference Laboratory on Tegmental Leishmaniasis and Coordinator of the IRR’s Health Technology Assessment Service.

Glaucia is a Member of the Brazilian Technical Advisory Committee for Leishmaniasis, of the Data Access Committee (DAC) of the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO)/Oxford University, and of the Visceral leishmaniasis Subgroup of WHO NTD Diagnostic Technical Advisory Group.