Elza Ribeiro Rocha (ERR) holds a Master's Degree in Neurosciences from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon and a Bachelor's Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Aveiro (UA). ERR is a curious researcher who keeps seeking opportunities to learn more, discuss science and be exposed to different work environments. Her last professional experience was in Boston, USA, at the Centre for Genomic Medicine, a Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital associated institute, under PhD Ricardo Mouro Pinto's supervision. There, she was first exposed to genomics-related research and was involved in two research projects. The first one was at a more quality assurance level where she was tasked with developing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to ensure the correct identification of dissected tissue used in her colleagues' research. She searched for tissue-specific genes, identified the appropriate probes, and wrote the qPCR SOP to be used in the lab. She presented this work at a meeting, with a poster. The second project was on Bipolar Disorder, aiming to explore the polymorphic DNA repeat found at the CACNA1C gene. For that, ERR was challenged to use Python scripts to characterise and look for patterns, be it in length, composition, or both, on this 30-mer sequence in telomere-to-telomere datasets. To complement this, she had also to validate it by preparing human DNA samples for long-read sequencing. She was able to present posters on this work at several meetings and conferences in Boston, USA. Her time there was funded by AICEP-Portugal, under the INOV Contacto programme. Before that, she was a Research Fellow (RF) at the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology-UC (CNC-UC), in Coimbra. There, she aimed to understand the circadian profile of dementia-diagnosed patients. She took a course on Introduction to Circadian Biology and Medicine to be better equipped with the current tools used in this field of research, namely actigraphy and clock genes. During this time, she did several science communication activities, especially for non-scientific audiences, mainly to raise awareness about the importance of sleep hygiene for our circadian health. This Fellowship was incorporated into a project funded by Santa Casa da Misericórdia. ERR also collaborated with a Lund, Sweden-based lab when she was doing her Master's Thesis at the Instituto for Molecular Medicine (iMM) in Lisbon, contributing to the publication of the "Chemogenetics with PSAM4-GlyR decreases excitability and epileptiform activity in epileptic hippocampus" article on October 2024, in the Gene Therapy journal. She had the opportunity to present posters about her Thesis work at two international conferences, the 6th FENS Regional Meeting and the 11th IBRO Neuroscience World Congress, and some national meetings. More recently, she joined the Functional Proteomics in Health and Disease Lab, back at the CNC-UC. With a RF under the supervision of PhD Bruno Manadas, she now aims to explore the neuroprotective potential of the Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) secretome, optimised via industrial hypoxia/physoxia priming, in Parkinson's Disease. She has been awarded two prizes in neuroscience communication-related competitions, a travel grant to an international conference also in Neurosciences, and a sponsorship to do a course. She values continuous learning and mentorship, having both received and returned mentoring. So far, she has trained two Master’s students and one Integrated Masters in Medicine's student at iMM; a post-Masters Erasmus intern, three MSc students, four BSc students, and some high-school students during her time at CNC-UC.In parallel, ERR has always been an advocate for community engagement activities, being the Biochemistry Degree Delegate for three years, member of the Pedagogy and Entrepreneurship Sector at the Student’s Association-UA, member of the Scientific committee of European Researchers’ Night in Coimbra, and more.