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Mariana Luz is a cell and molecular biologist with a keen interest in bioinformatics and computational biology. She has a BSc degree in Cell and Molecular Biology (FCT NOVA, 2020) and a MSc degree in Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine (FCT NOVA, 2022). Her master thesis focused on assessing the prevalence of transcription readthrough in healthy human tissues. After her masters, she received two research fellowships: one where she focused on studying X chromosome inactivation in systemic lupus erythematosus patients; another where she focused on detecting possible cancer biomarkers for cancer-associated fibroblasts. In 2024, she was awarded with a PhD grant from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and she is now studying imprint defects in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with the goal of improving their reliability and safety for broader biomedical use.
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Identification

Personal identification

Full name
Mariana Luz

Citation names

  • Luz, Mariana

Author identifiers

Ciência ID
E517-2E62-A9D2
ORCID iD
0000-0003-0165-3807

Email addresses

  • m.luz@campus.fct.unl.pt (Professional)

Addresses

  • UCIBIO - Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit, Departament of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon, 2829-516, Caparica, Almada, Portugal (Professional)

Knowledge fields

  • Natural sciences - Biological Sciences - Cell Biology
  • Natural sciences - Biological Sciences - Molecular Biology
  • Exact Sciences - Computer and Information Sciences - Bioinformatics

Languages

Language Speaking Reading Writing Listening Peer-review
Portuguese (Mother tongue)
Spanish; Castilian Intermediate (B1) Upper intermediate (B2) Upper intermediate (B2) Upper intermediate (B2)
English Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2)
Education
Degree Classification
2025/02/10 - 2029/03/01
Ongoing
 Biologia (Doutoramento)
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2024/01 - 2024/11
Concluded
 Biomolecular Sciences (Pós-Graduação)
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2023/05 - 2023/10
Concluded
 Methodologies and Techniques of Scientific Research (Pós-Graduação)
Universidade de Lisboa Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal
2020/09 - 2022/11/23
Concluded
 Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine (Mestrado)
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
"Assessing the Prevalence of Transcription Readthrough in healthy tissues through computational approaches" (THESIS/DISSERTATION)
 17
2017/09 - 2020/07
Concluded
 Cell and Molecular Biology (Licenciatura)
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
"Interaction between Chlamydia trachomatis and eukaryotic cells: search for novel chlamydial proteins delivered into host cells" (THESIS/DISSERTATION)
 15
Projects

Grant

Designation Funders
2024/01/02 - 2024/10/31 Ovarian Cancer Avatars for personalized therapy, a combination of in vivo & ex-vivo models to guarantee a test for every patient
PTDC/BTM-SAL/3796/2021
Research Fellow
Unidade de Ciências Biomoleculares Aplicadas, Portugal

Fundação Champalimaud, Portugal
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Ongoing
2023/05/01 - 2023/10/31 Dissecting the molecular mechanisms of X-chromosome inactivation using human embryonic stem cells
2022.01532.PTDC
Research Fellow
Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento, Portugal
 Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Ongoing
2022/05/02 - 2022/09/01 Cyber-Physical Intensive Care Medical System for Covid-19
101016000
Research Fellow
UNINOVA Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Novas Tecnologias, Portugal
 Horizon 2020
Concluded

Other

Designation Funders
2021/01/01 - 2025/12/31 Institute for Health and Bioeconomy
LA/P/0140/2020
10.54499/LA/P/0140/2020
Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento, Portugal

Universidade de Lisboa Instituto de Bioengenharia e Biociências, Portugal

Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal

INESC Microsistemas e Nanotecnologias, Portugal

Rede de Química e Tecnologia Laboratório Associado para a Química Verde, Portugal

Associação para a Inovação e Desenvolvimento da FCT, Portugal

Unidade de Ciências Biomoleculares Aplicadas, Portugal
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Ongoing
2020/01/01 - 2023/12/31 Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit
UIDB/04378/2020
10.54499/UIDB/04378/2020
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal

Unidade de Ciências Biomoleculares Aplicadas, Portugal

Rede de Química e Tecnologia Laboratório Associado para a Química Verde, Portugal

Associação para a Inovação e Desenvolvimento da FCT, Portugal

Universidade do Porto Instituto de Ciências Tecnologias e Agroambiente, Portugal

Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Concluded
2020/01/01 - 2023/12/31 Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit
UIDP/04378/2020
10.54499/UIDP/04378/2020
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal

Unidade de Ciências Biomoleculares Aplicadas, Portugal

Rede de Química e Tecnologia Laboratório Associado para a Química Verde, Portugal

Associação para a Inovação e Desenvolvimento da FCT, Portugal

Universidade do Porto Instituto de Ciências Tecnologias e Agroambiente, Portugal

Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Concluded
Outputs

Publications

Conference poster
  1. Luz, Mariana; Caldas, Paulo; Grosso, Ana Rita; Simone Baseggio; Rita Andrade. Corresponding author: Caldas, Paulo. "Transcription readthrough is prevalent in healthy human tissues and associated with inherent genomic features". Paper presented in Applied Bioinformatics in Life Sciences (5th edition), 2024.
  2. Caldas, Paulo; Luz, Mariana; Simone Baseggio; Rita Andrade; Grosso, Ana Rita. Corresponding author: Caldas, Paulo. "Transcription readthrough is prevalent in healthy human tissues and determined by inherent genomic features". Paper presented in RNA in Disease - RiboMed and IX ptRNA joint meeting, 2023.
Journal article
  1. Caldas, Paulo; Luz, Mariana; Baseggio, Simone; Andrade, Rita; Sobral, Daniel; Grosso, Ana Rita. Corresponding author: Caldas, Paulo. "Transcription readthrough is prevalent in healthy human tissues and associated with inherent genomic features". Communications Biology 7 1 (2024): http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-05779-5.
    Open access • 10.1038/s42003-024-05779-5
Activities

Event organisation

Event name
Type of event (Role) 		Institution / Organization
2021/04 - 2021/04 Task Force Testagem para rastreio de COVID (2021/04 - 2021/04)
Other (Other)
 Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2019/04/24 - 2019/04/24 ExpoFCT 2019 (2019/04/24 - 2019/04/24)
Other (Other)
 Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2018/03/23 - 2018/03/27 XXI ENEB (Encontro Nacional de Estudantes de Biologia) (2018/03/23 - 2018/03/27)
Meeting (Other)
 Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal

Event participation

Activity description
Type of event 		Event name
Institution / Organization
2024/10/23 - 2024/10/26 Botton-Champalimaud International Pancreatic Cancer Conference
Conference
 Botton-Champalimaud International Pancreatic Cancer Conference
Fundação Champalimaud, Portugal
2023/10/11 - 2023/10/15 Symposium focused on the non-coding genome
Symposium
 EMBO | EMBL Symposium: The non-coding genome (VP)
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany
2023/07/02 - 2023/07/07 Summer school focused on computational phylogenetics
Workshop
 OLISSIPO Summer School on Computational phylogenetics to analyse the evolution of cells and communities
Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa, Portugal
2023/04/27 - 2023/04/27 Workshop teaching deep learning methods and their applications in genomics in Python
Workshop
 OLISSIPO Workshop on Decoding the genome with deep learning
Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa, Portugal
2023/04/04 - 2023/04/04 Workshop teaching clustering and matrix factorization methods for scDNA-seq and scRNA-seq analysis of tumors in Python
Workshop
 OLISSIPO Workshop on Analysis of single-cell data from tumors
Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa, Portugal
2023/01/26 - 2023/01/27 Meeting put together by the RiboMed team covering several aspects of RNA biology, from RNA structure and function to RNA-associated dysfunctions and implications in human health.
Conference
 RNA in Disease - RiboMed and IX ptRNA joint meeting
Universidade de Lisboa Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Portugal
2022/06/22 - 2022/06/22 Workshop teaching time series analysis in R
Workshop
 Time Series Analysis and Prediction with R
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2022/06/21 - 2022/06/21 Workshop teaching statistics for data science, regression modeling and supervised learning-classification methods in R
Workshop
 Machine Learning Models in R
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal
2020/09/01 - 2020/09/01 10-hour course that teaches the history and basic biology of stem cells
Other
 The Science of Stem Cells
American Museum of Natural History, United States
2019/06/22 - 2019/06/26 Summer internship for undergrad students that provides the opportunity to first-hand experience science in a trailblazing research institute
Other
 Summer Science @ ITQB NOVA
Universidade Nova de Lisboa Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, Portugal
2019/01/28 - 2019/01/31 30-hour course that teaches the basics of R programming
Other
 Introdução à Programação em "R"
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal

Association member

Society Organization name Role
2018/01 - 2020/07 Núcleo de Biologia Celular e Molecular Member
Distinctions

Other distinction

2021 FCT NOVA Entrepreneurship Finalist
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Portugal