The Award — which advances high impact ideas with potential to drive new directions in biomedical research — supports Lourido’s studies of developmental transitions in single-cell pathogens, such as those that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis. Like caterpillars and butterflies, some single-cell pathogens metamorphose between different forms; and in the process their shape, behavior, feeding abilities, and capacity for transmission change. Lourido seeks to understand the patterns of gene expression underlying such transitions and to find the genetic “master switches” orchestrating these metamorphoses — knowledge fundamental to learning how parasites infect humans.