Ricardo F. dos Santos is an ERC funded Postdoc between Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica and NOVA Medical School-CEDOC, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UNL) at the Proliferation and Fate Regulation of Stem Cells laboratory headed by Dr. Catarina Homem. Ricardo produced significant scientific discoveries resulting in 5 first-author (e.g. EMBO J, mBio, Current Genetics) and 5 co-authored publications (5-year h-index of 7). Notably, he had an article highlighted in the News & Views of EMBO Journal. He has demonstrated science communication skills as verified by a best oral presentation award and by the initiation of he's teaching activities within the Molecular Biosciences PhD program and the Medical Microbiology MSc courses of UNL. Ricardo has mentored various BSc students during summer science initiatives, supervised a BSc student's project and 2 MSc research fellows. In addition, he has co-coordinated project development and international collaborations with researchers from RNA biology and bioinformatics fields. Ricardo F. dos Santos completed his PhD by the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technologies (ITQB) of UNL in early 2019. His doctoral work was centered on the study of non-coding RNAs and RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), which included several RNA-based applications. Notably, he attended the Advance Course in NGS Bioinformatics at the Wellcome Genome Campus - housing the Wellcome Sanger Institute and EMBL-EBI - and employed various sequencing approaches throughout his research. He performed and analyzed Ribosome sequencing and RNA-seq data that led to relevant publications (Andrade, dos Santos et al, EMBO J., 2018; dos Santos et al, Current Genetics, 2019; dos Santos et al, RNA Chaperones, 2020). In addition, he collaborated in the analysis of different kinds of NGS datasets of multiple organisms generated within the scope of various projects. These included RNA-seq of human pathogenic bacteria Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes, CLIP-seq of RNA-binding proteins and whole genome sequencing of a new bacterial Vibrio strain isolated from Cold Spring Harbor. Currently Ricardo is developing his postdoctoral work in the field of neural stem cells, with an interest in how neural cell fate establishment is regulated. Ricardo's 10-year experience in RNA biology and high technical knowledge in bioinformatic data generation and analysis of whole genomic and transcriptomic datasets will allow him to successfully apply this knowledge to disclose new molecular mechanisms governing neural cell differentiation.