I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Sex and Speciation team at ISEM. I work on evolutionary and conservation genomics.
I have a background in Biochemistry and I started working early in bioinformatics and sequence data analysis. My first research projects were about transcriptomics and gene expression. In 2014 I joined CIBIO-InBIO (Portugal) and moved to speciation and population genomics. Since then I have worked mainly with whole-genome data, including genome assembly and annotation, population structure and SNP-based analyses.
I did my PhD in cotutelle between the University of Porto and the Université de Montpellier, and I defended it in 2022. In my thesis I studied how natural selection and gene flow shape the formation of species, using hares and mice as models. I compared several hybrid zones with different levels of divergence, introgression and ecological differentiation.
In my current research I use population and comparative genomics to understand how divergence, selection and introgression shape biodiversity in non-model species. My main topics are:
* hybridisation and introgression, including mitochondrial introgression and mito-nuclear interactions (for example in hares and dragonflies)
* molecular evolution of immune genes and disease susceptibility in wild populations
* reference genomes and pangenomes for biodiversity research
I am involved in the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) and Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE). I am the Executive Coordinator of the Portuguese node (ERGA-PT) and I co-lead a BGE case study on myxomatosis susceptibility in Iberian hares.
I co-supervise PhD students working on mito-nuclear co-introgression and on shark population genomics. I am also very engaged in science outreach. I lead a long-term programme with a local high school where students take part in hands-on projects on genomics and wildlife health.