QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute James McCarthy is a Senior Scientist at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, and an Infectious Disease Specialist at Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital, Brisbane, Australia. His clinical training was undertaken in Australia the United Kingdom and the United States. He began his research career at the Laboratory for Parasitic Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA before returning to Australia 18 years ago. The major current focus of his research group is undertaking clinical trials that entail deliberate infection of human volunteers with malaria parasites by intravenous injection of Plasmodium-infected red blood cells. Volunteers are then followed in the pre-symptomatic period by qPCR until designated treatment. This system, in addition to expediting drug and vaccine development provides an unique capacity for prospective study of host-parasite interactions.