Experimental models are essential to study of infectious diseases. Although malaria is one of the most feared of human infections, we are fortunate in being able to move beyond in vitro and animal models and experimentally infect human volunteers. By monitoring the course of infection by PCR and terminating it before they become unwell these studies can be safely executed. Ethical imperatives require that such studies be undertaken to test drugs and vaccines under development. However, it is also possible to collect materials in these studies to investigate a wide range of questions in host-pathogen interaction, innate and acquired immune response, and parasite biology. Prospective sampling in the natural host in a setting where a wide array of current biomedical techniques is available is opening new opportunities to study human malaria while simultaneously undertaking antimalarial drug development. In this presentation, the exciting advances in translational research in malaria coming from these studies will be described, and some of the learnings from exploratory research will be presented.