I am currently an Associate Professor at the Medical School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and a group leader and vice director at the Católica Biomedical Research Centre (CBR). I studied Biochemistry at the Faculdade de Ciências of the Universidade do Porto and did my PhD research in the University of Cambridge, UK. My postdoctoral experiences took place at the National Institute for Medical Research and at the University of Cambridge (both in the UK). In 2012 I started my own research group, the Cell Biology of Virus Infection (CBV) lab, at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), in Oeiras, Portugal, which currently holds double (CBR/IGC) affiliation. Research in my laboratory focuses on host-pathogen interactions using influenza A virus and influenza B virus as a model system. The beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic made me become interested in finding novel diagnosis methods and in testing mechanisms that neutralize viral entry.

The research my laboratory develops has contributed to the understanding of viral-host interactions, in particular focusing on the pathways required for viral infection from the host and on host defenses as seen by our findings that:

• Influenza A virus progeny RNA accumulates in the cytosol creating viral inclusions by modifying the host recycling pathway (Vale-Costa et al, 2016, J Cell Sci 129: 1697-1710).
• Influenza A virus segmented genome assembles in cytosolic viral inclusions with liquid properties. (Alenquer et al., 2019, Nature Communications, 10, Article number:1629).
• A novel antiviral strategy may rely on tuning the liquid properties of liquid viral inclusions as assembly sites for influenza A virus genome. (Etibor et al., 2023, eLife 12:e85182)
• Host weapons of defence against microbes, such as decay accelerating factor, are modified during infection increasing viral pathogenesis. (Santos et al., 2021, PLoS Pathog, 17(7):e1009381)
• Viruses develop many mechanisms for controlling virulence. (Ho et al., 2020, Cell, 181, 1502-1517; Nieto et al., 2019, Frontiers in Immunology, 10, Article 132; Pereira et al., 2018, BMC Research Notes, 11:673; Pereira et al., 2017, J. Virology, 91, pii: e00528-17).
• Sars-CoV-2 viral evolution and maternal protection of fetus and newborns (Gonçalves et al., 2023 JCI Insight. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.167140; Alenquer et al., 2021, PLOS pathogens, 17(8): e1009772; Gonçalves et al., 2021, Cell Reports Medicine. 2(12):100468)

My research is supported by international agencies such as the European Research Council (LOFlu project) and La Caixa and the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

I am an alumna of the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), a premier exchange program from the US state department, and Public understanding of science is very important to me: I dedicate time engaging with different audiences about the wonder of science and discovery, as well as informing the general public on different virology-related issues in TV and Radio broadcasts, documentaries, press releases, and have published several pieces about virology.