Celia Aveleira

Célia Aveleira got her BSc degree in Biology in 2002 at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Portugal. In 2003, she received a FCT Research Fellowship to work at Retinal Dysfunction Group, Centre of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, IBILI, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, in a project entitled “Mechanisms of cell degeneration in diabetic retinopathy”. In 2005, she got a FCT PhD Fellowship to develop her PhD research at the same group. She spent 2 years at the Penn State Hershey Retina Research Group, Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Penn State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA, to developed complementary studies for her PhD. Célia got her PhD degree in Biomedical Sciences at Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, in 2010. After attaining the PhD, Célia Aveleira become a postdoctoral researcher at Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra. Her research is focused on the role of caloric restriction mimetics as therapeutics targets to delay the aging process of normal and premature aging diseases, such as Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS). In 2011 Célia Aveleira was granted with a FCT Post-Doctoral fellowship to study the potential role of neuropeptide Y (NPY) as a mimetic of caloric restriction to reduce aging and ameliorate age-related diseases. In 2013 she got a position at CNC, as an Invited Scientist under the project “Aging, Stress and Chronic Diseases: From Mechanisms to Therapeutics”, supported by QREN - Mais Centro: Programa Operacional Regional do Centro. In line with her research, Celia was awarded in April 2015 with an Innovator Research Grant as Principal Investigator from Progeria Research Foundation (USA) to study the therapeutic potential of ghrelin to rescue HGPS premature aging phenotype. Célia was recently enrolled in the FCT Investigator Programme and started her appointment as Assistant Investigator (equivalent to Assistant Professor with no teaching load) at CNC in January 2017. Celia has been focused on better understand aging and how hypothalamus regulates whole-body aging with the ultimate goal of finding new biomarkers, therapeutic targets and translational approaches to improve “healthy” aging. She is also interested in caloric restriction mimetics as therapeutics targets to delay the aging process of normal and premature aging diseases. Célia A. Aveleira is author/co-author of 21 scientific articles (7 as 1st and 1 as senior author; 9 with international collaborators; 15 published in Q1 journals, 10 with a CNCI >1, 3 in 10% percentile) with an accumulated IF of 113.693, 717 citations and h factor 12 (Scopus). She is also co-author of 2 book chapters. As an important component of dissemination of her research outputs, she participated in several national and international meetings being an author/coauthor of 125 presentations: 57 oral communications (21 as 1st author and 6 as senior author) and 68 poster presentations (26 as 1st author and 7 as senior author). Since 2003 she has participated in 17 research projects (two as PI and 1 as Co-PI) and has been responsible for student training and supervision: 5 MSc and 3 BSc students as principal supervisor, 3 PhD and 4 MSc students as co-supervisor and collaborated in the supervision of 2 PhD, 3 MSc and 7 undergraduate student. Célia A. Aveleira was granted 10 awards/grants. She has participated as lecturer in several MSc and PhD programs of the University of Coimbra and in several academic examining committees of MSc and PhD Thesis. She is Review Editor of Frontiers in Aging and peer-reviewer in several international journals. In addition to her scientific activity, Célia has also participated in several science communication activities integrated in the CNC outreach programme, particularly, in the Brain Awareness week, European Researchers Night and Ciência Viva summer program, as well as other activities related with science dissemination to high school students and teachers.