CNC

Overview

Joana Ferreira, graduated in Biology in 2006 (University of Coimbra) and completed her PhD in Biosciences, specialty Neurosciences (University of Coimbra) in 2012, under the co-supervision of Ana Luísa Carvalho at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (University of Coimbra, Portugal) and Ann Marie Craig at the Center for Brain Health (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada). After completing her PhD, she stayed at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC) as a postdoctoral fellow to complete her studies on the molecular mechanisms of traffic of glutamate receptors. In 2016 she joined the group of Laurent Groc, at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (CNRS, University of Bordeaux, France), to explore the regulation of the nanoscale distribution of NMDA receptors (NMDARs). Recently she has joined the CNC-UC as an Assistant Investigator to start her independent line of research on the nanoscale architecture of the synapse, trans-synaptic signaling and its implications for neurological diseases. She has an extensive and recognized experience in molecular imaging of NMDARs and its interactors and a broad background in molecular neuroscience, with a specific training in super-resolution microscopy techniques. As a young-researcher, she has achieved a successful track-record: 9 publications as first-author in high-impact peer review reference journals, including Neuron and PNAS, out of a total of 17 publications, 2 of them as co-corresponding author. She has supervised several students (2 master students from the University of Bordeaux, 1 from the University of Bialystok, Poland and 1 graduate student from the University of Coimbra) and mentored several PhD students in the laboratory. She has participated as an instructor at the CAJAL Advanced Neuroscience Training Program in Bordeaux, as a lecture in several advanced courses from the PhD Program in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine (PDBEB), and as a teacher in the Molecular Biology course from the Master Program of the University of Coimbra (UC). She has been invited as a jury member by the Bordeaux International Neuroscience Master Program and the Molecular Biology Master Program of the University of Coimbra, and for a PhD thesis committee of the Nova Lisbon University. She has successfully organized an international symposium (2017 FENS Regional Meeting, Hungary), a workshop at one of the biggest microscopy schools in Europe (MiFoBio 2018, France), and an advanced course for PhD students (Advanced Imaging, 2022, PDBEB, UC). She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of 2 international grants (IBRO and NARSAD), co-PI in a consortium project funded by La Caixa Foundation Health Research 2020, and has participated in 8 funded research projects, 18 international scientific meetings, 7 of them as an invited speaker. Recently, she has been awarded with the prestigious 2021 BBRF Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and the IBRO Return Home Fellowship.

Search

Joana Ferreira

E-mail

Overview

Affiliation

Publications