My main research interests are related with the "immortal" germ line lineage and female fertility. More specifically, the regulation of gene expression during oogenesis and early embryonic development. I also have a strong interest in meiotic recombination, DNA repair and mitosis. My research group mostly uses Drosophila melanogaster as our model organism. I did my BSc (5 years) in plant biology at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) and my PhD research under the supervision of Antony Carr (University of Sussex, UK), where I worked with DNA damage checkpoints in fission yeast. My postdoctoral research was done under the supervision of Ruth Lehmann (Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York, USA), where I worked on the regulation of gene expression during Drosophila primordial germ cells segregation. I established my research group at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC) in 2006, and have since moved first to the University of Algarve, Portugal (where I got tenure) and recently to the University of Aveiro (Portugal).