Sofia Batalha is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Biosystems & Data Science Group of iBET - Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (Oeiras, PT), after completing a PhD in Bioengineering (MIT Portugal programme) from the NOVA University of Lisbon (ITQB-NOVA). Sofia's current research at the Biosystems & Data Science Group employs omics analysis tools to further distinct lines of research at iBET, including: a) uncovering immune mechanisms of response to antibody-based cancer therapeutics; b) analysing sources of heterogeneity of human producer cell lines to optimize production of viral vectors for gene therapy. During her PhD, she pursued complementary approaches to uncover the immuno-modulatory effects of HER2-targeted cancer therapies both at the local and systemic levels: locally, by developing advanced heterotypic 3D models of the tumor-immune microenvironment of HER2+ breast cancer, which were used to probe the immune response to anti-HER2 biologicals currently in clinical use; and systemically, by analyzing the peripheral immune populations of breast cancer patients (in a clinical study conducted by IPO Lisboa) with the goal of finding response biomarkers. For this, she employed state-of-the-art bioinformatics approaches to characterize the patients' peripheral immune profile using single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). Sofia holds a strong background in Biology, having specialized in Molecular Biology and Genetics during her MSc training (Faculdade de Ciências, University of Lisbon), conducted at iMM - Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Lisbon, PT).