Margarida Gama-Carvalho is an academic researcher with ~25y experience in undergrad and post-grad training. She holds a BSc degree in Biology by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (1994) and an PhD in Biomedical Sciences by the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, where she was a faculty member between 1996 and 2010. Since 2011 she is tenured Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon and is currently the Coordinator of the MSc Program in Biochemistry and Biomedicine. She also held visiting post-doctoral scientist appointments at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston (USA; 2003-2004), visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School (2016) and Honorary Professor appointment at the School of Biomedical Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (Australia). Since 2015 Margarida Gama-Carvalho is the Principal Investigator of the RNA Systems Biology Lab at the BioSystems and Integrative Sciences Institute ¿ BioISI, a multi-disciplinary research unit of the Faculty of Sciences, where she is also a member of the executive board and coordinator of the Genomics Facility. She is also responsible for the technical direction of the Ciências Testing Center that was established during the COVID-19 pandemic. Margarida Gama-Carvalho has 52 publications in refereed journals receiving ~1000 citations in total. Since becoming established as an independent group leader in 2009 Margarida Gama-Carvalho has been the lead PI or researcher in 12 competitively funded grants, including 2 grants from the EU Commission, and one from EU Joint Programs. She received the first L¿Oreal-Portugal Honor Medal for Women in Science in 2004 and was awarded the 2023 Gilead Génese Research award for her work in virology. Margarida Gama-Carvalho has successfully supervised seven PhD students In Biomedicine and Systems Biology and am currently supervising four. She has also mentored 8 post-doctoral fellows, as well as 20 MSc students in the fields of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Microbiology/infectious diseases, Biochemistry, Neurosciences, Bioinformatics from the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon as main advisor, and more than 25 MSc students as internal advisor. Her research interests focus on the study of RNA-dependent post-transcriptional regulatory networks in vertebrates, including regulation by microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs and mechanisms of regulation of splicing, stability and translation of mRNA. She is particularly interested in the mechanisms of diseases associated with RNA metabolism and in the development of RNA-based therapeutic applications, with emphasis on the immune system and host-pathogen interactions (mainly HIV infection); and on motor neuron and neurodegenerative diseases. Her major area of expertise is in the cellular and molecular biology of RNA processing and metabolism, with strong emphasis on the application of transcriptomic and bioinformatics methods, including the integrated use of large-scale data from multiple 'omics' platforms and computational modelling, as well as the development of methods and application of 3rd and 4th generation sequencing technologies for diagnostics and research. She has presented >100 communications at meetings and conferences, including invited lectures, is a member of several national and international scientific societies, and a member of the editorial board of the journal BMC Genomics.