Luísa Pereira

​Genetic Diversity Group, i3S
"Pathogens as main drivers of selection in humans"

Luísa Pereira is a human population geneticist, and group leader at the Institute of Research and Innovation in Health, University of Porto, Portugal.

She has been using genomics to infer the past and evolution of human populations and to evaluate differential susceptibility/resistance between human populations to complex diseases. She has recently mapped genes that may protect sub-Saharan African populations from presenting the worse clinical phenotypes following infection by Helicobacter pylori and dengue fever virus.

​Find out more about her research and publications here.

Filipe Costa

​CBMA, University of Minho
"Insigths into biodiversity and evolution after 20 years of DNA barcoding, with a focus on marine life"

Filipe Costa is a marine ecologist, Associate Professor and group leader at the University of Minho. He serves as Portugal delegate in the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) and served in the management committee of the European Cost Action DNAqua-Net. 

His main research interests dwell around the themes of molecular biodiversity and evolution, with a strong focus on the employment of DNA barcodes to investigate and monitor marine biodiversity. 

He has worked extensively in the development of reference libraries of DNA barcodes for marine invertebrates and fish from Europe, contributing to expose considerable hidden and cryptic diversity, and to reveal unforeseen evolutionary mechanisms. 

Find out more about his research and publications here.

Catarina Ginja

InBIO-CIBIO
"On the origins of cattle: domestication followed by adaptive introgression?"

Catarina Ginja is a geneticist specialized in domestic animal populations, leader of the Archaeogenetics research group at BIOPOLIS-CIBIO-InBIO and collaborator of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Porto. ​​

She serves as chair and cattle representative of the Committee on Animal Genetic Diversity of the International Society for Animal Genetics and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
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She has conducted extensive research in the field of population genetics and conservation of domestic animal biodiversity. She is experienced in state-of-the-art technologies including the analysis of ancient genomes of domesticated animal species.

Find out more about her research and publications here.

Herlander Azevedo

InBIO-CIBIO
"Genomics and bioinformatics strategies to tackle diversity and domestication in grapevine​"

Herlander Azevedo is a plant biology researcher working at the University of Porto’s BIOPOLIS/CIBIO-InBIO (Research Network in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology).

​He has a long-standing interest in plant molecular biology, with work that ranges from the uncovering of new gene functions (functional biology) to the exploitation of transcriptomics and genomics information to understand evolution, biodiversity, plant physiology, and the nature of genes and genomes.

Find out more about his research and publications here.