Liliana Sofia Meireles da Costa has completed her bachelor degree in Genetics and Biotechnology in 2014 at the Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro in. She then obtained her master degree in Biotechnology for the Health Sciences in 2017, in the same institution. During her academic course, she had the opportunity to get in touch with several different areas and techniques of research such as genetics, molecular and cell biology. She had also worked abroad in the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (UK) were she was able to map for the first time the Y chromosome of a gibbon species by using fluorescent in situ hybridization. Throughout this work she was able to acknowledge the importance of model systems and biomedical studies for therapeutics research. Currently she is a PhD student at ICVS, University of Minho, searching for nuclear ataxin-3 protein-protein interactions as therapeutic targets in Machado-Joseph disease. She is interested in the field of neurosciences in general and more particularly in neurodegenerative diseases and the physiological function of the disease-proteins, as a way of better understand the pathological mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration, which may contribute for development of more efficient therapeutic strategies.