Luísa V. Lopes (b. 1975, Lisbon, Portugal) is a neuroscientist at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular-João Lobo Antunes in Lisbon, Portugal; studying the mechanisms inducing the "early-aging" of cognitive function, focusing on hippocampal circuitry and related behavior. She is a Biochemistry graduate from University of Lisbon (1998). During her PhD, carried out between the University of Lisbon, University of Cambridge, UK and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, she has detailed the role of a specific receptor for adenosine in the aged brain, the A2A, which affects glutamate release and cognition. In 2003, Luisa moved to Lausanne, Switzerland for a postdoc at the Nestlé Research Center, implementing new models to study the impact of chronic stress on memory and brain-gut interactions. In 2008, she joined the Instituto de Medicina Molecular-João Lobo Antunes in Lisbon as a staff scientist, and in 2013 became a Group Leader (https://imm.medicina.ulisboa.pt/investigation/laboratories/luisa-lopes-lab/#intro). Her team has pinpointed circadian disorders as a trigger for accelerated cognitive loss (Mol. Psychiatry, 2013; Scientific Reports, 2016)), established one of the underlying mechanisms for early synaptic degeneration in the hippocampus (Nature Neuroscience, 2017); and most recently, evidence of a neuro-immune link in short-term memory (Sci Immunol, 2019). She is currently focused on implementing novel ageing-equivalent models to study human synaptic function (Mol. Psychiatry 2018; Cell Rep 2019). Luisa has received public and private funding (FCT, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, EMBO, Bial, Santa Casa and EUH2020); she is a Mentor of the New York Academy of Sciences STEM program and founder of the Society for Neuroscience Lisbon Chapter. In 2019 she was one of the awardees of the Interstellar Initiative for Healthy Aging, promoted by the New York Academy of Sciences and Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development.