A handful of new talent at once

We are excited to welcome Marta, Lena, Catarina, Maria and Sérgio to the team!

Marta Amaro is a Biomedical Engineer from Lisbon, and has developed her Master's thesis with us studying transcriptional changes in natural killer (NK) cells during the formation of liver metastases. Now she wants to leverage her computational expertise in support of the lab's multiple research projects involving high-dimensional and big data analysis, with the vision to bridge the dry and wet lab and contribute significantly to the field of metastasis biology.

Lena Jansen is a Master's student from the Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, doing an 8-month internship with us. Working closely with our PhD student Andreia Gonçalves, Lena is eager to learn more about cancer-neuro-immune interactions in the context of metastatic breast cancer.

Catarina Barbosa Matos is a Biochemist from Póvoa de Lanhoso, and joins us after a successful PhD under the supervision of Sandra Costa and Agostinho Carvalho, at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), University of Minho. During her thesis, Catarina explored mechanisms by which lung-resident immune cells drive the progression of pulmonary fibrosis and anti-fungal responses. Now Catarina renews her passion for lung immunity yet in a different context, and joins the lab as a Postdoc to elucidate how tissue-specific immune responses shape the dissemination and metastatic outgrowth of breast cancer cells in distant sites.

Maria Soutilha is a Biologist from Lisbon, and joins us after successfully completing her Master's thesis in the laboratory of Sérgio Almeida at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM), where she studied aberrant epigenetic regulation of transcription as a source of replication stress in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Now she joins the lab to help us with general organization and support multiple research projects, while nurturing her own research curiosity for dissecting mechanisms of disseminated tumor cell reactivation.

Sérgio Pinto is a third year undergrad from the Bachelor's in Cell and Molecular Biology at Nova FCT, doing a 2-month internship with us. Working closely with our PhD student Arjun Reeja, Sérgio is eager to learn the most out of his first real-world scientific experience.

Welcome y'all, and have a great time!