My scientific career has been focused on developing computational tools and methods to advance microscopy image analysis, with a particular emphasis on bacterial cell biology. Education and Early Career: - MSc in Biochemistry (2014) from University of Aveiro, where I gained a strong foundation in molecular and cellular biology. - Joined the Bacterial Cell Biology Lab at ITQB NOVA as a research technician in 2015, where I was first exposed to advanced microscopy techniques and image analysis for studying bacterial cells. PhD Research (2018-2022): - Completed PhD in Biological Engineering at ITQB NOVA under supervision of Dr. Mariana Pinho. - Developed novel computational methods for analyzing super-resolution microscopy data of bacterial cells, particularly Staphylococcus aureus. - Key achievement: Created eHooke, an automated image analysis pipeline for spherical bacteria that can segment cells and classify their cell cycle stage using machine learning. This tool has been widely adopted in the field. - Published 4 peer-reviewed papers during PhD, including 2 as first author in high-impact journals like Nature Communications Postdoctoral Research (2022-present): - Joined the Optical Cell Biology Lab at IGC led by Dr. Ricardo Henriques. - Leading the development of NanoPyx, a high-performance bioimage analysis framework. - Integrating machine learning and GPU acceleration techniques to dramatically speed up microscopy image processing workflows. Key Skills and Expertise: - Advanced programming in Python, C, and OpenCL for scientific computing and image analysis - Machine learning and deep learning, particularly applied to microscopy image segmentation and classification - High-performance computing and GPU acceleration of image processing algorithms - Super-resolution microscopy techniques and analysis - Bacterial cell biology, with focus on cell division and antibiotic resistance mechanisms - Open-source software development and community building