Inês Rodrigues Lopes graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Coimbra in 2014 and obtained her MSc degree in Biochemistry in 2016 at the University of Porto. Currently, she is a PhD student of the PhD Programme in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine (PDBEB), at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC), University of Coimbra. Inês works in the areas of Microbiology and Cell Biology. Her studies focus on the virulence mechanisms and molecular processes operating in hosts infected with bacterial pathogens with high impact in human health, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Shigella flexneri, Salmonella Typhimurium, Escherichia coli and Group B Streptococcus. She has published 5 papers in peer-reviewed journals, mainly in the area of infectious diseases. During her PhD project, Inês characterized the infection profile of 191 Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates within various host cell types. This comprehensive study was accomplished by integrating high-content, fluorescence microscopy-based and luminescence-based high-throughput screening approaches which established Staphylococcus aureus intracellular lifestyle as a prevalent feature of infection, with potential implications for the effective treatment of staphylococcal infections (Rodrigues Lopes I, et al., 2022). In addition, Inês screened a genome-wide collection of 1,920 transposon-mapped Staphylococcus aureus mutants (NTML collection), to identify bacterial factors that modulate different stages of Staphylococcus aureus intracellular infection within professional and non-professional phagocytes, to define novel therapeutic approaches.