Maria M Pinto holds a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences with a minor in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, from the Medical Sciences Department, University of Aveiro, and a Master's degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal). Additionally, she complimented her education with a summer course in Scientific Research Methodologies and later with a course in Research Methodologies in Life Sciences, Nature Sciences and Engineering, from the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, University of Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal). She also attended two online non-credit courses authorized by the University of California (Irvine, USA) offered through Coursera entitled "Basics of Extracellular Vesicles" and "Extracellular Vesicles in Health and Disease" from the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles. During her Master's degree, she developed her thesis entitled "Brain-enriched plasma-derived extracellular vesicles as biomarkers for Machado-Joseph Disease" under the supervision of Doctor Magda M Santana and Professor Luís Pereira de Almeida in Gene and Stem Cell Therapies for the Brain Group Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology - University of Coimbra (CNC-UC), In January 2021, she was granted a fellowship to continue the work developed in her Master's in the framework of the JPND European Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3/Machado-Joseph Disease Initiative (JPCOFUND/0001/2015-ESMI) aiming to identify biomarkers for Machado-Joseph Disease. During her academic/professional journey, she learned several cellular and molecular biology techniques such as plasma isolation from whole blood, iPSCs cell culture; Neural differentiation of iPSCs cultures; Immunocytochemistry; Extracellular vesicles isolation and characterization; DNA/RNA/protein extraction and quantification; cDNA synthesis; qRT-PCR; Western blot and ELISA. As a result of her research work, she is the author and co-author of 5 oral communications and 3 poster presentations in scientific meetings in the field, and, thus far, she is the co-author 3 of journal articles (one published and two submitted). Pursuant to her professional journey, since October 2021 she is also a member of the Ataxia Global Initiative, a worldwide research platform with the goal to facilitate the clinical development of therapies for ataxias. Recently she was granted with a PhD Studentship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to develop her PhD project aiming to investigate the role of peripheral ataxin-3 in Machado-Joseph Disease pathogenesis.