 Malaria is a devastating disease, which infects over 200 million people every year. It's caused by microscopic parasites delivered to some unsuspecting victim by a mosquito. These tiny parasites shuffle off on a quest for their dream home, red blood cells. Like all good homes, these cells provide protection to the parasites, helping them hide from the immune system. They also float around in a rich soup of sugar, protein and fat, providing plenty of food for bustling baby parasites. In particular, these hungry little parasites love cholesterol. In fact, they need it to survive, but they just don't have the recipe to make it themselves. Instead, they steal it from our unfortunate victim's blood. Luckily for the parasites, there tends to be quite a bit of cholesterol in human blood. A bit too much in some people. But if we dry up the supply chain, maybe we can tackle malaria by starving the parasites out. We already have a whole range of drugs which lower blood cholesterol. We use them to prevent heart disease. These drugs are cheap to produce and safe to use. And we know they can kill malaria parasites in the lab. But before we start doling out the drugs, it's important to know exactly how they work. And this is where my research comes in. I look at the ways that malaria parasites get a hold of cholesterol and what they do once they've got their hands on it. But cholesterol is usually invisible to even the best microscopes. So I'm treating my parasites to a delicious dinner of specialized cholesterol. It still tastes the same to the parasite, but the molecules that I'm serving up have bright fluorescent lights attached to them, meaning I can literally watch my blue parasites steal my green cholesterol from my red blood cells. Using a machine called a flow cytometer, I can measure how bright the light is inside individual cells, which I use to work out how much green cholesterol my parasites are eating. And by looking for changes to the brightness or the location of the light when I add a drug, I can figure out how that drug is working and if it would be good to use in malaria patients. I'm also putting my parasites through a game of survival. Just how much do I have to deprive them of their favorite food before they start to suffer? But before you accuse me of being too cruel, remember that these parasites kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. But if we can stop them from stealing cholesterol, then we can stop malaria from stealing lives. Thank you.