Hard-working humble hero

"Dr Juliana Naldoni is the lab hero of the parasitology group at Cambridge University. Since joining us in 2023, she has made herself invaluable while remaining a genuine ‘unsung hero’ - the most humble and likable of individuals. She trained in Brazil with a doctorate on parasites of Amazonian fish, but was unable to remain in that field after moving to the UK. Determined to keep contributing to research, she took on the technician role in my malaria research group. Juliana was not daunted by this mid-career challenge (learning parasite culture, molecular genetics and biochemistry rather than field ecology). She brought the scholarly attitude of a true academic, plus the dedicated, detail-oriented approach of an excellent technician. Juliana never fails in her duties to support the research group. Supplies in our busy culture room never run out; the cleaning rota is meticulously adhered to; the budget is always recorded. If equipment needs fixing, Juliana can be relied upon to liaise smoothly with the workshop crew for minimal disruption to the progress of science. This is ‘invisible work’… until it stops happening! But she is more than just an excellent technician, going beyond her role description in myriad small ways. Taking up the challenge of reducing our environmental impact, she quickly became a leading light on the Pathology Department’s LEAF committee. Here, she does not merely talk-the-talk, but actually makes things happen: we now recycle our lab gloves, and have reduced our plastic waste to landfill by using autoclavable plasticware that Juliana sourced, tested and installed in the CL3 lab. She is generous with her time in finishing up projects with other lab members (regularly working irregular hours to help with long timecourses, for example). She is equally generous in supervising undergraduate students in the lab, and devoting weekends to public outreach for our annual Cambridge Festival. Simultaneously, she contributes her own strands of research, and is already a co-author on a recent paper. (She is also still examining PhD theses in the field of fish parasitology back in Brazil!) It is rare technician who can make herself so rapidly so integral to an entire research group - from baking delicious cakes when a student graduates, to cooking up extra litres of media at short notice on a Friday afternoon. To quote a postdoc paraphrasing a motto from her native language ‘If you don’t have a Juliana, you must buy a Juliana’."

Nominated by Catherine Merrick, Pathology Dept, Cambridge University, UK