Affiliation: Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio)

Fields or areas of research Plant molecular biology, plant epigenetics, plant virology, RNA silencing

My career has been developed in the areas of plant biotechnology, virology and gene regulation, with projects focused on (but limited to) agronomically important crop plants. By working in five different countries (Australia, Brazil, Spain, The Netherlands and England), I had the opportunity to interact with big players in these areas, which greatly helped me to build a strong expertise, scientific maturity and independence in these topics. During my PhD in Microbiology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Feb 2008), I characterized for the first time a luteovirid associated with cotton blue disease, an economically relevant illness in cotton crops. My thesis received the best PhD prize from the Brazilian Society of Virology. I have demonstrated in the following years that proteins with little or no sequence identity in this viral family can take the same elegant route to neutralizing plant's defense mechanisms.

From 2010 to 2021, I was a full professor and researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where I've accumulated more than 1000 hours of teaching for undergraduate and graduate students. I started my own laboratory and research lines in the University. Our group has focused in a very competitive research area related to RNA silencing and virology and I have supervised students from all academic degrees, ranging from undergraduates to PhDs, on those projects.

I was recently awarded the talent attraction grant PlanGenT from the Generalitat Valenciana and started the new position as a group leader at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio) in January 2022.