Mariana Abrunhosa Pereira (Porto, 1981) holds a degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP, 2006), attending the 5th year of Architecture at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, 2004), under the Erasmus Program. In 2009 she received a fellowship of the Inov-Art Program in order to do an internship at the Instituto Universitário de Arte, Cultura e Tecnologia (M_EIA), in Mindelo, Cape Verde, where she taught, participated in the SURE_Africa research project (Sustainable Urban Renewal: Energy Efficient Buildings for Africa) and worked as an architect in projects for Local Communities Development and projects of Sustainable Tourism in Santo Antão island. From 2010 to 2015 she attended the PhD course Sustainable Energy Systems (SES) of the MIT-Portugal Program in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, with a PhD grant awarded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Under the SES Doctoral Program, she developed the thesis 'Critical Inputs Towards Early Thermal Performance in Architectural Design of Residential Buildings in Temperate Climates - the Portuguese case'. Currently she is a researcher at the research group Morfologias e Dinâmicas do Território (MDT) - Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura e Urbanismo (CEAU), FAUP