Eurico Morais-de-Sá is the Group leader of the Epithelial Polarity and Cell Division (IBMC/i3S, University of Porto) since 2018. He graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Porto in 2002. Eurico studied MAPK signalling in yeast during his first research internship (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam), and then conducted predoctoral work using crystallography and X-ray diffraction to determine molecular interactions underlying the ability of small compounds to block Familial transthyretin amyloidosis (Morais-de-Sá et al., JBC, 2004). The GABBA PhD program inspired him to change research interests for his PhD. His PhD work at the Gurdon Institute (University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)) led to discoveries on the fundamental understanding of epithelial cell polarity (Morais-de-Sá et al., Cell, 2010) and anterior-posterior axis formation in Drosophila (Morais-de-Sá et al., Dev Cell, 2013). He then became intrigued with the challenges encountered by epithelial cells during cell division, and was awarded postdoctoral fellowships (EMBO_LTF/Marie Curie-IEF) to move to IBMC at Porto. During his post-doctoral period, he developed approaches to study the coordination between epithelial polarity and cell division in Drosophila ovaries, contributing to the view of epithelial cytokinesis as a polarized and multicellular process (Morais-de-Sá and Sunkel, EMBO Rep, 2013). He then started his progression into an independent research line (2014 FCT auxiliary Investigator position), and then established his own research group (CEEC2017 Principal Investigator). His team has revealed how the subcellular organization of core regulators of epithelial polarity is dynamically adjusted during cell division and interphase to maintain epithelial architecture (Carvalho et al., Curr Biol, 2015; Moreira et al., Cell Reports, 2019; Ventura et al., Development, 2020; Osswald et al., Curr Biol, 2022; di Pietro et al., Curr Biol, 2023). This provides critical knowledge on the mechanisms that control the spatial organisation of the epithelial tissue, which are essencial during development and disrupted in many human cancers. His group is also working towards the development of new approaches to manipulate protein function with high-temporal control using optogenetics (Zeng et al., Nat Struct Mol Biol, 2021; Osswald et al., Curr Biol, 2022). Moreover, his group has contributed for the development of new Drosophila models to study gastric (Figueiredo et al., Cancers, 2021; Figueiredo et al., Gastric Cancer, 2022) and breast cancer (Faria et al., Dis Model Mech, 2023). Eurico Morais-de-Sá has been the supervisor of 5 research fellows, 9 MSc students (7 completed), 5 PhD students (2 completed) and 4 postdoctoral fellows.