Associate Professor of Immunology at the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Porto (FFUP). Her research group at I3S is mostly devoted to understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms occurring during host-parasite interactions, namely in the discovery of the new drugs to control neglected diseases such as Leishmaniasis, Chagas Disease, African Trypanosomiasis, and Malaria. Started these studies using Trypanosoma cruzi during her doctoral work at Pasteur Institute in Paris (1993), and later continued in Porto using Leishmania sp (1997) and more recently Trypanosoma brucei and Plasmodium. Has published over 130 original peer-reviewed articles, supervised 26PhD students and many postdocs/research development. Teaches Clinical Immunology for Analytical Analysis at FFUP, University of Porto and participate also on Ph.D. Program on Pharmaceutical Sciences, Programme Medicines and Pharmaceutical Innovation (i3du) and in the Doctoral Programme on Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology Applied to Health Sciences (BiotechHealth). Obtained a First Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (1990), Master in Immunology (1992) and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences - Immunology (1997) and aggregation in Immunology from the University of Porto, Portugal. She has scientific business graduation from the Business School of Porto (2014) that was supported by the launch of the start-up company, VitaControl (2015) and one second company Quadrel (2021). She is the group leader of Parasite Disease team, since 2006, at the Institute of Molecular Cellular Biology (IBMC) in i3s (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto). She was a Member of the Scientific Council at FFUP and at IBMC/I3S, was Vice-President of the Education Council of FFUP. She has participated in different evaluation projects from FCT, Innovation Agency, CYTED, IAPEMEI, and ANR. DGAV (Portuguese Veterinary Agency) evaluator of different dossiers of new pharmaceutical formulations and / or vaccines to enter the Portuguese market. The accumulated know-how of her group in the parasite-host interaction supports the participating in a European consortium (HEALTH.2013.2.3.0-1: Innovation in vaccines, MuLeVaClin project) aimed at optimizing and evaluating the potential of a human visceral leishmaniasis vaccine containing recombinant proteins from Leishmania and insect salivary glands adjuvanted by a strong TL4 agonist. The group is also heavily involved in drug screening and target validation for novel therapeutical approaches in Leishmania, T. brucei and T. cruzi in the context of two other European consortiums (FP7-HEALTH-2013-INNOVATION-1, Kindred and NMTrypI). For these projects, she is involved in several aspects of the preclinical pipeline from early target discovery and validation, advanced toxicology and animal testing and the use of drug delivery systems. A long-lasting connection with field diagnostic in Leishmaniasis is harboring fruits with the ongoing development of a new diagnostic kit. Lastly, the team is starting the implementation of a new biological model using Plasmodium. The propose is to dissect how these parasites target the liver by combining live imaging techniques, transgenic parasites, and mice. The team also proposes to study the contribution of the liver as a lymphoid organ in the case of sporozoites infection. Ultimately this will contribute to identifying potential targets to be considered in vaccine approaches.