After graduating in Biotechnological Engineering in 2003, I joined the Center for Neuroscience of Coimbra (CNC, Portugal) to develop my MSc thesis, where I characterized signal transduction pathways involved in yeast responses to stress. This work established yeast as a cellular model to study inflammatory and stress responses and to support drug screening (Marques et al., 2006, J. Biol. Chem., plus two co-author publications). In 2006, I joined Juan Lerma’s laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante (CSIC-UMH, Spain) to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience. I provided the first evidence linking glutamate signaling to neurocytoskeleton dynamics during neuronal development, identifying kainate receptors as key molecular tethers between synapse formation and neuronal maturation. These results were published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Marques et al., 2013) and highlighted in a featured review in Neuron (Lerma & Marques, 2013), and received the “Best Paper 2014” award from the Portuguese Society for Neurosciences. This period consolidated my expertise in glutamatergic receptors, neuronal maturation, and axonal growth. My scientific activity was interrupted by maternity leaves in 2009 and 2012. In 2012, I joined the Brain Development & Disease Laboratory at CNC for postdoctoral training, focusing on the pathological roles of purinergic and glutamatergic receptors in brain disorders. Despite lacking individual funding during the first two years, I remained scientifically active through collaborations, contributing to several co-author publications. I demonstrated that P2Y1 receptors contribute to glutamate-induced neurodegeneration (Simões et al., 2018, Cell Death & Disease) and to synaptic and memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease models (manuscript in preparation). These findings supported the concept of a shared degenerative pathway among neurodegenerative diseases and were funded by an Alzheimer’s Association international grant (NIRG-15-361884), in which I was Co-PI. I was also exploring the existence of hybrid P2X/GluN receptors, proposing a novel receptor concept (Postdoctoral Fellowship SFRH/BPD/107903/2015), and contributed to multiple publications on purinergic signaling. This stage consolidated my expertise in purinergic–glutamatergic interactions. Subsequently, I developed a research line addressing brain diseases from a developmental perspective, integrating my background in neurodevelopment and disease. This work was recognized by the award of a CEEC Individual Junior contract (2017) and my first grant as Principal Investigator (PTDC/MED-NEU/28160/2017; €238,109). Within this framework, we demonstrated that purinergic receptors fine-tune cortical excitatory and inhibitory wiring (Alçada-Morais et al., 2021, Cerebral Cortex) and uncovered lateralization in developmental mechanisms, suggesting that functional hemispheric specialization may be rooted in distinct developmental programs. These findings supported two funded projects and received the AstraZeneca Foundation Innovate Competition Award (2024). We further showed that pathological synaptic remodeling during epileptogenesis reactivates developmental mechanisms and identified adenosine A2A receptors as therapeutic targets (Xu et al., 2022, Scientific Reports). This positioned the CD73–A2AR axis as a regulator of adult synaptic remodeling with implications for nerve regeneration and neuronal integration. In parallel, I have supervised MSc and undergraduate students and participated in outreach activities, including Brain Awareness Week and European Researchers’ Night. I co-authored two scientific chronicles in the national newspaper Público, contributed to science communication initiatives, and authored a chapter on a book of health literacy (2023). Currently, I also coordinate the CIBB seminar series and I am involved in organizing the BEBIN annual scientific meeting.