André Seixas graduated in Biology at Faculdade de Ciências de Lisboa, and performed his Master Thesis project in Herpesvirus Pathogenesis at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Lisboa). He then was a research fellow in 2 different institutes, which allowed him to gain extensive work experience in a variety of techniques. First at iBET (Oeiras) where he worked on downstream processing of vaccines and next at ITQB NOVA (Oeiras) where he addressed the role of ncRNA in bacterial infection. During his young career, he has gained expertise in both Microbiology, Molecular Biology and Cellular Biology techniques. André Seixas is currently a PhD Student in Applied and Environmental Microbiology from an inter-university consortium including the Molecular Biosciences Doctoral Program from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa where he is under supervision of Doctor José Andrade. The main topic of his research is the study of the RNA chaperone Hfq in Listeria monocytogenes, an intracellular bacterial pathogen. Hfq is a very important post-transcriptional regulator of gene expression, widely known to promote ncRNA-mRNA basepairing. Recently other functions have emerged for Hfq, namely in the control of ribosome biogenesis and rRNA metabolism. André is currently addressing the role of Hfq in Listeria physiology, where it does not seem to be required for sRNA-mRNA interactions. Over the course of his doctoral studies he has gained great expertise in the study of Hfq and analysis of stress conditions, along with RNA extraction and downstream applications. He has 4 articles published in peer-reviewed journals (including a paper in the prestigious PNAS journal) and several poster communications in national and international meetings.