Rui M. Gil da Costa graduated as a veterinary surgeon in 2003 from the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Portugal. After practicing as an official veterinary surgeon in the United Kingdom, he took a MSc degree in Oncology, a Residency in Veterinary Pathology and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Porto's Abel Salazar Institute for Biomedical Sciences. He first undertook post-doctoral studies at the University of Porto Faculty of Engineering and the Portuguese Institute of Oncology and then at Dr. Peter Nelson's lab (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA). He is now an Assistant Professor at the Federal University of Maranhão (São Luís, Brazil) and remains a collaborating member of three Portuguese research groups: CITAB, CI-IPOP and LEPABE. He currently supervises/co-supervises one PhD student and 2 MSc students. He supervised/co-supervised one post-doctoral researcher, 2 PhD students, 20 MSc students and 3 BSc students. His work, largely focused on translational cancer research, originated over 100 indexed scientific papers (Scopus) with h index = 26, and is presently centred on genitourinary malignancies and tumours induced by human papillomavirus.