Maria is a Postdoctoral Researcher working within the Cancer Immunology Research Program as a member of Parish and Beavis lab groups. Maria’s current projects investigate pathways to overcome T cell exhaustion for immunotherapy purposes. Maria has obtained a Masters and PhD degrees in Immunology by studying the immune response during infectious diseases, specifically malaria disease. Maria had the opportunity to expand my experience in T-cell biology by working in a research group focused on the development of vaccines that could induce the formation of tissue resident memory CD8 T cells for protection against malaria. Finally, Maria decided to apply my CD8 T-cell knowledge into cancer immunology research. My projects involve different technologies, including CRISPR, multicolour flow cytometry and animal models. Our goal is to develop genetically engineered CAR-T cells resistant to the exhaustion process that happens in solid tumours, improving the current immunotherapy options available.