Maria Alexandra Pais graduated in Physics at the University of Coimbra (1988), has a MSc in Internal Geophysics by the University of Lisbon (1993) and a PhD in Internal Geophysics by Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (1999). She was an Assistant Professor from 1988 to 2023 and is an Associate Professor since 2024, at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Portugal. The main area of research has been Geomagnetism: inversion of geomagnetic field models for Earth's core flows; recovery of signatures of the solar activity on geomagnetic field data and models, using different data analysis tools; computation of geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in the Portuguese transmission power network. From 2002 to 2007, she was the coordinator of the Geophysics group in Centre of Computacional Physics (CFC). Since 2012, she has been member of the Earth and Space Research Centre of the University of Coimbra (CITEUC). Since 2018, she has been leading a multidisciplinary team that brought together specialists in Physics, Applied Geophysics, Geology, Physical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, to simulate and monitorize GICs. She has been the PI of 3 FCT projects, the team leader in 4 bilateral programs with French research institutions and the Portuguese coordinator of 2 Erasmus+ European projects, involving French and Italian collaborators. She is the author or co-author of more than 35 publications in Scopus indexed journals, co-supervised 3 PhD thesis and supervised several MSc thesis and scientific research grants. From 2020 to 2022, she was the Director of the Astronomical and Geophysical Observatory of the University of Coimbra. She is presently the coordinator at the UC of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master GeoPlaNet (2022-2028), and the national representative at International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA).