Ana Pereira, PhD
Pharmacist by training, I pursued my graduate studies in Neuroscience at the Champalimaud Foundation where I studied how aversive experiences shape empathy and social interactions After many years doing research in sunny Lisbon, I crossed the ocean and moved into freezing cold Boston for a Post Doc at Harvard University where I studied how maternal aversive experiences influence the behaviour and physiology of their progeny.
After many years working in basic research, I gave the first steps towards applied research at the Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Many times life seems to move in circles, and I found myself working again in the fascinating world of using viral vectors as tools to target specific cell types, a parallel project that I pursued during my PhD. My next steps took me back to Portugal where I happily embraced the role of Senior Scientist/Project Manager at Sea4Us, a Biotechnology Company that specializes in the discovery and early development of new pharmaceutical drugs based on marine compounds. Here, in my everyday work I find the potential that the marine ecosystem has in providing us new solutions for unmet clinical needs. And that gives me hope in a brighter future!