Professor Wai-Hong Tham studied molecular biology at UC Berkeley and received her PhD from Princeton University. She is currently Division Head of Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. The Tham laboratory is focused on deciphering new host-pathogen interactions that govern successful malaria infection. They study parasite adhesins that are required for entry into human red cells, parasite surface proteins that bind to human complement proteins for immune evasion and involved in parasite transmission. The overarching aim is to rationally design and generate new inhibitors or antibodies that block these interactions and hence, recurrent malaria infection in humans and mosquitoes. Her work intersects with the fields of structural biology, immuno-epidemiology and molecular parasitology. For her contribution to understanding malaria parasite invasion, she has received several awards including the 2011 and 2019 Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research (team prize), the 2017 David Syme Research Prize, the 2018 Burnet Prize and the 2020 Biochemical Society International Award.