Bárbara graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Vila Real, Portugal). She then moved to Coimbra, where she obtained an MSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her research career started during her Master’s studies at the Microbial and Molecular Biotechnology Group, led by Dr Isaura Simões. There, she worked with an aspartic protease from Rickettsia conorii (APRc), namely aiming to clarify the autoprocessing and function of this rickettsial protease in mammalian cells. Barbara has been recently accepted at the Lisbon Biomedical and Clinical Research PhD Program (LisbonBioMed) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. Her PhD project which aims at detecting and diagnosing the liver stage of Plasmodium infection using extracellular vesicles, is being supervised by Dr Hernando del Portillo as well as Dr Maria M. Mota and Dr Miguel Prudêncio from the Instituto de Medicina Molecular – João Lobo Antunes (iMM, Lisbon, Portugal).
