Mariana Cruz Almeida

Mariana Cruz Almeida graduated in Biochemistry (BSc. 2011) at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She got her MSc in Biochemistry at the University of Coimbra in 2013 with her MSc thesis entitled 'Characterization of the innate immune response to Alternaria infectoria'. She then pursued her research activities at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of Coimbra (CNC) as part of a national-wide team (IBMC & CNC), investigating whether ambiguity of CUG codon in Candida albicans would alter host infection. In 2014, she started her PhD, within a EU Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (FungiBrain), at the University of Aberdeen in the UK. Here, she explored fungal pathogenesis to understand how C. albicans hyphae navigate and steer in response to host cues, adopting growth behaviors that facilitate host colonization and tissue invasion. During this time, she became highly specialized in molecular biology tools for the study of biological processes in Candida-host responses. In 2017, she obtained her PhD in Microbiology, entitled 'The role and regulation of Pxl1 in the hyphal steering of Candida albicans'. In late 2017, she decided to return to Portugal. Although not in the area of Medical Microbiology, she accepted a postdoc position at the Mining and Raw Materials group at University of Coimbra. Here, I gained extensive molecular and environmental skills, as well as in polymers¿ antimicrobials (ReNATURE, PTW, ERAMIN and SafeSurf projects). Because she had brief experience in proteomics during her PhD, she later decided to acquired further know-how on high-throughput proteomics (MEDPERSYST project), and thus accepted a postdoc position at the CIBB¿s proteomics research group (2020-2021). She published 5 articles in international journals (46 citations), with 5 papers being currently prepared for publication. She interacted with 51 collaborator(s) co-authorship of scientific papers and co-supervised 2 MSc students, 6 BSc students and tutored 3 students (7 out of 11 were international students). Mariana has also participated in several national and international conferences contributing with 15 oral (10 as speaker) and 8 poster (4 as presenter) presentations. She has co-organized 7 events, participated in 27 events, received 5 awards and/or honors and was the 2018 ASM young ambassador for Portugal.