Joana FM Pires has both a BSc. Biomedical Science (since 2018) and MSc. (since 2018) degree in Molecular Biomedicine from Faculty of Medical Sciences of University of Aveiro. During her undergraduate studies, she became curious in studying how different organisms have different behaviors and levels of cognition. Therefore, she developed her Master Thesis in cooperation with the European Neuroscience Institute (ENI) - A Joint Initiative of the University Medical Center Göttingen and the Max Planck Society under the supervision of Dr. Ira Milosevic. There, she was characterized the expression and localization of amisyn (STXBP6) in the different brain areas during mouse lifespan, using an optimized confocal acquisition technique of sagittal brain slices. This work helped in the characterization of functional and biological roles of this protein during exocytosis, as well as its variation at different developmental stages and how this impacts the SNARE complex. During her academic carrer and through competitive evaluation, she gained two Erasmus Scholarships, which allow her to develop scientific work in an early career stage, thus gaining solid knowledge in international laboratories. She also obtained a Master Research Fellow (MindGAP H2020/FET-Open project) in the field of Biomaterials at Biomark@UC to develop a novel portable biosensor device able to capture brain extracellular vesicles involved in mind/body interactions. This work resulted in an oral presentation at the ISEV2021 Annual Meeting. Joana FM Pires also involved in several in volunteer programs with children at the university hospital and in the organization and participation of scientific conference cycles. Recently she has been involved in science communication projects for non-specialised people, as the national coordinator of the Coimbra district of the international science festival "Pint of Science". Currently, she is a Master’s Research assistant at the Multidisciplinary Institute of Aging (MIA-Portugal), her research focus is to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms/processes in neuronal metabolism that lead to increased disease susceptibility, collaborating in several research projects supported by start-up funds from MIA-Portugal (an H2020-funded Teaming project), two FCT projects and one ERC-Portugal award from FCT of Dr. Nuno Raimundo. Currently, had developed a series of advanced laboratory and management methodologies, that allow it to perform research with a high standard of scientific rigour. She is also co-author of a original article at Book Chapter in Aging: From Fundamental Biology to Societal Impact (doi:10.1016/c2020-0-00576-1) demonstrating her knowledge in the field. She also participated as second author in a review article on the role of lipids in the interaction between mitochondria and other cell organelles (revised and submitted to Trends in Cell Biology), and as third author in a research article on the role of lipids in the nuclear envelope in DNA repair (submitted to Cell). Joana Pires attended and presented her work at several national and international scientific meetings (e.g., selected poster presentation sessions - 3rd RESETageing Conference (2023), 2nd MIA Ageing Spring School (2024); was part of the organizing committee of MIA-Spring School 2022/2023 and was awarded with a participation and travel grant for the 22nd International Symposium on Chromaffin Cell Biology (2024). Joana Pires, has experience in molecular techniques (e.g. Western Blotting, qPCR, PCR) immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence, as well as maintenance and manipulation of model organisms (e.g. mice). Moreover, she has expertise in isolation and culture of (i) whole brain samples (in mice) and (ii) primary cellular cultures of both cortical areas (in mice). She has a vast knowledge in mitochondrial characterization, confocal imaging as well as data treatment (GraphPad) and video and image analysis (ImageJ and Adobe Photoshop).