Ana Karina Mendes has a degree in Genetics and Biotechnology (2010), a Master in Biotechnology for Health Sciences (2013) and a PhD in Biology (2020) by Universität Regensburg, Germany. She was awarded with a Research Fellowship to pursuit studies on the Diagnosis, Prognosis and Personalized Treatment of Cystic Fibrosis at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She conducted an R&D internship at Amgen Biopharmaceutical GmbH (Germany), where she was involved in the development and implementation of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology in cell lines. During her PhD (focused on (epi)genetics and immunology) she has also used next generation sequencing-based methods and bioinformatic approaches for high-throughput data analysis. Her publication record includes papers in internationally recognized scientific journals. Currently, she is a researcher at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in the research unit - Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS), where she is involved in projects focused on characterization of molecular mechanisms associated with disease development and progression and identification of salivary molecular biomarkers to support the diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of oral and systemic diseases. She is also a teaching assistant at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, supervisor/co-supervisor of students and she had participated in Academic Juries.