Claudia Rato da Silva has a Ph.D. in Plant Cell Biology (2007) and extensive postdoctoral experience. As an undergraduate, Ph.D. student and Postdoctoral Research Associate, Claudia received 24 years of intense laboratory research training in biological sciences in the UK, Portugal, USA, and France. Claudia has an outstanding training in molecular and cell biology (including plant biology), biochemistry and genetics (including plant genetics), genome editing (CRISPR-Cas), and experience in microbiology and analytical chemistry. Claudia has an h-index of 18 including 7 papers with first/co-first authorship. Currently, Claudia is working as a Senior Research Scientist at InnovPlantProtect CoLab, aiming at developing new and effective protection solutions for Mediterranean crops. For over ten years, Claudia was mainly focusing on biomedical research, first at the Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS, University of Aberdeen, UK), and since 2013 at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR, University of Cambridge, UK). At the IMS, Claudia performed multidisciplinary research in Systems Biology (Cell and Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Analytical Chemistry, and Mathematical Modelling) aiming at developing a model of a feedback controller of the antizyme translational recoding, using concepts from enzyme kinetics and control engineering. At the CIMR, in David Ron world-leading research group, Claudia studied protein folding homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in mammalian cells, specifically the regulation of the ER Hsp70 molecular chaperone BiP. Claudia's main contributions in the last years provided critical advances in the field of proteostasis, allowing for a better understanding of how mammalian cells regulate protein folding homeostasis in the ER, which can play a role in multiple diseases. During her Ph.D., Claudia performed multidisciplinary research in plant molecular and cell biology, and genetics, while studying several signalling pathways (Ca2+, calmodulin and cAMP) and their implications in polarized cell growth using pollen tubes as model system. Supervision: Trained and supervised multiple undergraduate and postgraduate students. Full proficiency in the following laboratory techniques: Molecular biology: extraction and purification of nucleic acids; PCR, RT-PCR, qPCR; molecular cloning; CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing (non-homologous end joining and homology directed repair); site directed mutagenesis; high-throughput genotyping; restriction analysis; agarose and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE, native PAGE); isoelectric focusing; quantitative Western blotting and dot blotting; capillary electrophoresis. Cell biology: mammalian cell culture (CHO, HEK293, AR42J, HeLa); transient and stable cell transfections (viral transduction and Flp-In T-REx systems); multi-channel flow cytometry analysis and cell sorting; bright field, fluorescence, confocal and scanning electron microscopy; localization of fluorescent fusion proteins and secondary messengers; immunocytochemistry; yeast tetrad dissection; in vivo pharmacological analysis of polarized cell growth; microinjection of living cells. Biochemistry: small-scale production and affinity purification of proteins; protein immunoprecipitation and pull-down assays; proximity dependent biotin identification (BioID); enzyme activity assays; protein-binding assays using fluorescence polarization, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), and biolayer interferometry (Octet); stable isotope labelling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC). Other techniques: genetic manipulation and handling of mammalian cells, yeast, bacteria and plants; infectivity assays in plants; electroporation; particle bombardment; basic analytical chemistry techniques (HPLC); FPLC; handling of radioisotopes (3H, 35S); autoradiography and fluorography; ELISA assays; technical writing.