Esteves AR graduated in Biology by the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra in 2006 and completed a PhD degree in Biology, specialization in Cell Biology by the Technology and Science Faculty of the University of Coimbra in 2011. During her PhD she worked under the supervision of Dr Sandra Cardoso at CNC and completed her advanced training abroad in the lab of Dr Russell Swerdlow at the Research Institute of Kansas City, USA recognized expert in studying cell energy and mitochondrial metabolism and cell respiration. In 2011 Esteves AR integrated the CIBB (which integrates CNC/UC) as a postdoctoral researcher with a FCT fellowship. Currently she is a PhD Researcher at CIBB where she is studying the role of the microbiome-mitochondria crosstalk in the activation of neuronal innate immunity and its impact in the development of neurodegenerative diseases, namely PD. In fact, she was first author of a breakthrough paper published in Gut (IF: 31.793) where it was elucidated how a bacterial metabolite, that can cross the blood brain barrier, can drive PD neurodegeneration through mitochondrial dysfunction (Esteves et al., 2021, Gut - Q1 Gastroenterology). More recently, she published a paper unraveling how mitochondria contributes to innate immunity activation in idiopathic PD and disclosing that a-synuclein over production is an innate immune response. Overall, despite two interruptions in her scientific career due to 2 maternity leaves (2016 and 2019), Esteves AR published 45 papers in international peer reviewed journals (37 in Q1) with over 1,695 citations and with a h factor of 28 (WoS). From a total of 45, 31 are original papers and 18 were published as first author in top specialty peer-reviewed journals including Gut, The Neuroscientist, Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, J Neuroinflammation, Sci Reports and Redox Biology. Moreover, she was corresponding-author of 2 papers (Esteves et al., 2019, BBA-MBD; Arduino et al., 2011, CPD) and senior-author of 2 papers (Silva et al., 2022, Antioxidants; Guedes et al., 2023, Biomedicines). Proving her scientific leadership, she was co-supervisor of 4 master thesis and supervisor of 2 master students. Currently, she is co-supervisor of 2 master students and supervisor of 1 master student. Moreover, she was laboratory mentor of 4 PhD and 8 Master students, and supervised, during their laboratory internships, 5 PhD students, 14 Master students and 14 undergraduate students. Furthermore, she won 2 travel grants, 1 poster award (2017-International Symposium MitoPorto-Advances in mitochondrial research), 2 oral presentation awards (2013-XIII SPN Meeting; 2021- 55th Annual Scientific Meeting of the ESCI) and 3 FCT fellowships. Recently her work published on Gut was awarded with the Pfizer 2023 Award in Basic Research. She has participated in 14 research projects and was the principal investigator of an FCT project (2018) in collaboration with Dr. Merari from São Paulo University (Amount of funding: 224.839,22€). Currently, she is the principal investigator of an approved FCT project (Amount of funding: 49.981,25€). Moreover, she published 10 book chapters including publishers such as Springer and Elsevier and participated as first author in several scientific events with 43 (17 as first author and 2 as last auhtor) poster communications and with 48 (20 as first author) oral communications in which 10 were by invitation. She was also invited to edit 4 special journal issues in Current Pharmaceutical Design (2017), in Antioxidants (2021), in Frontiers in Aging (2022) and in Life (2023). She is also part of the editorial team of Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. Esteves AR expects to continue to advance our understanding of the gut-brain axis generating forefront knowledge in the field of neurodegenerative disorders, specifically PD, with important clinical implications.