Joana F Neves is a Senior Lecturer in Mucosal Immunology, group leader at King’s College London and 2023 Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine Prize winner. Joana completed her PhD in developmental immunology at Queen Mary University of London before moving to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School to study immunological responses in colitis.

In 2014, Joana joined King’s College London where she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, a King’s Prize fellowship and a RCUK/UKRI Rutherford Fund fellowship before establishing her research group and becoming a Lecturer. Her work has been funded by the Wellcome, UKRI, MRC, EPSRC, NC3R, BBSRC, Royal Society and The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Joana and her team developed complex intestinal organoid systems that incorporate immune, stromal, neuronal and microbial components to study cell interactions in health and disease, which already lead to the discover of new roles for Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC) in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).