Joana Guedes has a PhD in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine from the University of Coimbra (UC), developed in collaboration with the Center for Immunology & Inflammatory Diseases of the Massachusetts General Hospital. She explored the mechanisms underlying immune cell dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease mouse models and patients. For her postdoctoral studies, she joined the Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Laboratory at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the UC. In 2019, she was a Visiting Researcher at the lab of Frauke Zipp at Mainz University Medical Center (UMC) and in 2024 she was a Visiting Researcher of Immunology at the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation at the UoM. Currently, she is a Junior Researcher at the Center of Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB). Her main interest is to understand how immune cells and factors shape neuronal circuits and how immune dysfunction is related with neuropsychiatric disorders. She published 18 articles and 3 book chapters, 9 as first author and 1 as last and corresponding author. Her main contribution to science is the recently published paper in Neuron (2023), in which she is the first author, entitled "IL-4 shapes microglia-dependent pruning of the cerebellum during postnatal development". In this paper she described that IL-4 impacts microglia-mediated engulfment of neurons in a critical period of cerebellar postnatal development and that high levels of IL-4 induce cerebellar circuit deficits and hyperactivity and impulsivity reminiscent of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This paper described a mechanism that underlies the comorbidity between allergies and ADHD in humans. In January 2025, she published her first paper as last author entitled "Early-life IL-4 administration induces long-term changes in microglia in the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex" where it was described the long-term consequences of early-life allergies for microglia. She authored/coauthored 60 oral and poster communications in national and international conferences, was invited to give 10 talks in conferences/seminars, tutored 33 students, supervised and is supervising 2 PhD students and 3 MSc students, and was the main opponent of 9 MSc and PhD thesis. She participated as researcher in 10 funded projects, and she is the Principal Investigator in 2 projects aiming at understanding how early-life allergies constitute a risk factor for the development of ADHD. From the 10 awards she received, it is important to highlight the Young Scientist Lectureship Award of the 2025 ESN-HSN Meeting in Greece, a Fellowship PARSUK Bilateral Research Fund 2024, the SBS Internationalisation Award – School of Biological Sciences, FBMH given by the University of Manchester (UoM) and the the 2019 Pfizer Award in Basic Research - Lisbon Society for Medical Sciences/Pfizer Portugal. She has an extended network of international collaborators at UMC, UoM and KU Leuven and she is coordinating a clinical research project in which she leads a team of team of 6 clinicians (children’s psychiatrists, allergy specialists and family doctors), 6 laboratory, 6 ecology and 2 informatics researchers from CIBB, the Coimbra University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Center for Functional Ecology and the Centre for Informatics and Systems of UC. Since 2019 she also participated/coordinated 13 science communication and outreach activities. She was an Invited Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at UC in 2020 and, since then, she has always contributed to teaching activities by teaching classes of Cellular Physiology, Neuronal Circuits and Behavior and Neuroimmunology.