About me

I graduated in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL), Portugal, in 2001. In 2002 and 2007, I completed my MSc and PhD degrees in Behavioural Ecology and Evolution at the Sorbonne Université Campus Pierre et Marie Curie, France. My supervisors were Etienne Danchin and Richard H. Wagner, two extraordinary researchers and friends who played a crucial role in shaping my scientific thinking.

I returned to Portugal in December 2007.  Between 2008 and 2009, I worked on the translation to Portuguese of the book “The Descent of Man and The Selection in Relation to Sex”, by Charles Darwin (2nd edition, 1874). My translation was later awarded an Honourable Mention at the 2010 Latin Union and FCT Translation Award.

I started my first post-doc in September 2010, at FCUL, in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c). At FCUL, I also worked as a Monitor of practical classes (2009-2013) and, later, as an Invited Assistant Professor (2013-2017), teaching Animal Behaviour to undergraduate students.  During these years, I was lucky to collaborate with many researchers and students with whom I deepened my scientific knowledge and published important works. I highlight Luís Vicente (my supervisor from 2010 to 2013) and  Margarida Matos (my supervisor from 2013 to 2017 and a great friend).

In May 2017, I started my second post-doctoral position at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) (which changed, in October 2024, to GIMM, Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine), and since March 2022 my current PhD Researcher position at the William James Center for Research (WJCR) of ISPA-IU. In both cases, I have been lucky to work with Rui Oliveira, a leading researcher in Behavioural Neuroscience with whom I am developing a new research line about social cognition in fruit flies and conducting a long-term artificial selection experiment for sociality in zebrafish. Since 2016, at ISPA-IU, I have also been working as Lecturer, teaching Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, Neuroethology, Social Neuroscience, and Genes Brain & Behaviour to MSc students.