Diana Nascimento concluded her PhD in Neurosciences (Faculty of Medicine of the University of Oporto, Portugal) in 2016 where she focused on the neurobiological mechanisms occurring under chronic inflammatory pain. For several years, she has explored neuro-glia communication events at the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of inflamed animals, advancing possible new therapeutic targets. These studies resulted in 3 publications as a first author, the most recent one being awarded with the Grunenthal prize for basic research in pain, 2016. As part of her PhD, short training stays (Heidelberg in 2012) and the collaboration with the King´s College (co-supervision, 2013/2014), strongly increased her technical and theoretical expertise. More recently, she was a post-doc at Karolinska Intitute under supervision of Dr. Camilla Svensson. At this lab, many novel models of rheumatoid arthritis are used to better understand pain that seems to be uncoupled from inflammation. Here, DN gained many other skills on cutting-edge technologies and the possibility to work with human nervous tissue. These studies resulted in two high impact publications (Neuron, JEM) as shared first author. Currently, she is a junior investigator at ICVS (School of Medicine, Minho University, Portugal). Here, she is working with different models of astrocytic impairment (i.e. at the level of exocytosis) to help better understand the role of astrocytes in the normal brain function and circuitry. These studies include the injection of virus for genetic manipulation of relevant proteins, coupled with optogenetics and electrophysiological recordings. The main goal is to unravel how astrocytes modulate neuronal activity which could be relevant for a wide range of diseases, namely mental health conditions frequently showing cognitive deficits or depressive-behavior. This project granted DN a 6-year contract in the first call for scientific employment in Portugal (by FCT).