David Costa completed an Integrated Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Porto (FFUP) in 2012. In 2014, he joined the Parasite Disease group at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC) of the UP, now integrated into the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S), as a research fellow. Here, in the context of two FP7-funded projects, he was involved in the preclinical evaluation of compound efficacy against trypanosomatids, as well as drug target validation in multiple parasites. David Costa then received a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from FFUP in 2021. During this period, he investigated the importance of several surface molecules for the infectivity of malaria sporozoites, contributed to the development and optimization of methodologies to study pathogen infectivity, and continued to collaborate with trypanosomatid research at i3S. David Costa then worked as a Junior Researcher in the Host-Parasite Interactions group at i3S and is interested in the study of protozoans responsible for parasitic diseases such as malaria, leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis and Chagas disease, with the goal of contributing to the development of effective vaccines and treatments. He has already co-authored 11 papers (3 as the first author), published mostly in Q1 scientific journals such as Haematologica, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and Scientific Reports, and 1 preprint (first author). His median publication IF is top 5% in parasitology. His current main goal is to identify surface molecules of Plasmodium parasites that could be targeted by immune interventions.