Susana Sousa e Cunha graduated from the University of Minho in 2019 with a degree in Biology and Geology, and concluded her Master’s degree, in 2022, in Applied Biochemistry - Biomedicine, at the same University. In 2020, she developed her master dissertation related with the "Detection and quantification of cell-free Nucleic Acids (cfNAs) in blood samples of patients with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML): Protocol optimization" at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho. In 2023, she collaborated as a volunteer researcher on the project, iMetabolBU – “Immunometabolic requirements in Buruli Ulcer” during which she implemented the in vitro model of infection of THP1-differentiated macrophages with Mycobacterium ulcerans, providing the experimental basis for the project. In the same year, she was awarded a research fellowship within the “la Caixa Foundation” funded project FITTED – “A flexible platform for generating synthetic virus to control infectious diseases” that aims developing a flexible platform for generating synthetic bacteriophages with desirable and specific antibacterial properties towards personalized treatment of infectious diseases. She co-supervised the experimental work on phage therapy of two medical students in the context of the MinhoMD curriculum. More recently, she was awarded a PhD studentship through the FCT 2025 Call for PhD Studentships, under the project “Ferroptosis-mediated cell death in Mycobacterium ulcerans infection: insights into Buruli ulcer pathogenesis”. During her collaborations within these different research projects, she has gained knowledge in a range of several areas of research, including molecular diagnosis for cancer, immunometabolism, infection, and phage therapy; as well as expertise in several essential laboratory techniques, such as cell culture, microbiology, flow cytometry, quantitative RT-PCR, and Western Blot.