Rafael Queirós Fernandes graduated in Biochemistry in 2013. He started his scientific research activities during undergraduate training, when he had the opportunity to work within a research group in the field of organic chemistry at University of Aveiro, on a project aiming to synthesize porphyrinic compounds to be used in antimicrobial photodynamic therapy. During his master training at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto, he recognized the importance of applying scientific research to the clinic, while studying polymorphisms in the promoter region of the neutrophil elastase gene in end-stage chronic kidney disease patients. This work earned him the first authorship on a paper (Fernandes et al., Genes 2016; IF=3.242), marking the beginning of his scientific path studying gene expression and human genetics in the scope of human health/disease. In 2016, he obtained a PhD fellowship from FCT under the PhD Programme BioSYS (Biological Systems, Functional & Integrative Genomics), integrated in the BioISI (Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute), from Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon. His PhD project aimed to study cap-dependent mechanisms of mRNA translational control mediated by upstream open reading frames (uORFs) on the transcript encoding the stress-responsive kinase, PERK, which has been implicated in the aggravation of diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. During his PhD he published five review papers and two paper summaries (either as first author or co-author) and presented eight posters at national and international scientific meetings. Moreover, he is currently preparing a manuscript with his results to be submitted to a high impact factor journal. After completing his PhD in 2020, he had the opportunity to continue has an independent researcher on a group from BioISI, where he functionally characterized mutations in the promoter and 5' untranslated region of genes related to familial hypercholesterolemia. From this work he published a paper as second author (Graça et al., Biomedicines 2021), and expects to collaborate on two more papers as co-author. Until now, he accumulated an impact factor of 12.90 and an h-index of 2.