Venue

The meeting will be held at i3S – Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde.
Rua Alfredo Allen, 208; 4200-135 Porto, Portugal
Tel: +351 226 074 900 | Site: http://www.i3s.up.pt/ | E-mail: events@i3s.up.pt
GPS coordinates: 41º 10’ 30.008’’ N, 8º 36’ 12.488’’ W.

Organization

Organizing Committee
Ana Raquel Oliveira Ribeiro
Beatriz Gandra Moreira
Carlos Ricardo das Neves Moreira
Darmit Manish Kumar
Francisco de Castro Sobral
Inês Castro da Silva Almeida
Inês Filipa Matos Coutinho
Inês Milhazes Faria
Inês Sofia Pinto Antunes
João Francisco Galvão Dias e Vasconcelos Ferreira
João Luís Pestana Freitas de Sousa Cardoso
João Miguel Carvalho Nogueira
João Paulo Alves Rodrigues
Maria Francisca Teixeira de Magalhães Ribeiro
Morgana de Vargas Russel
Nuno Miguel Pimenta Ribeiro
Paula Filipa Ferreira Teixeira
Vítor Daniel Pacheco Dias

Scientific Committee
i3S Postdoc Researchers

Program

Day 1 | 26th March

09h00 - 12h00 Registration

10h00 - 11h00 Kick-off Session | TBA

11h00 - 12h00 Workshops | TBA

12h00 - 13h00 Lunch (not provided)

13h00 - 13h30 Opening Session | Claudio Sunkel

13h30 - 14h30 Keynote Speaker | Frank Winkler (online) | Cancer Neuroscience of Brain Tumors

14h30 - 15h30 Students’ Presentations

Eduardo Veríssimo | Glial Activation Drives Sensory Axon Regeneration in the Spiny Mouse

Sofia Figueiredo | A Transgenic Zebrafish Model of Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 37: Developmental and Ageing Motor Deficits

Beatriz Moreira | AHR spying the Melanoma color code: from a sensor to a regulator of the Melanoma Microenvironment

Maria Carolina Pereira | Characterization of the niche interactome of acute myeloid leukemia

15h30 - 16h00 Coffee Break

16h00 - 17h00 Keynote Speaker | Soyon Hong | Neuro-glia-immune mechanisms of synapse loss in neurodegeneration

17h00 - 18h00 Poster Session and Porto d'Honra

18h00 Closing

Day 2 | 27^th March

09h00 - 10h00 Keynote Speaker | Tâm Mignot | Bacterial predators: invisible pilars of soil ecosystems

10h00 - 10h30 Sponsor talks

10h00 BGI genomics: BGI multi-omics services introduction
10h10 Medchemexpress: From 2D Cultures to Organoids: Advanced Fluorescent and Luminescent Tools for Functional Cell Analysis
10h20 MPDI: Welcome to MDPI

10h30 - 11h30 Students’ Presentations

Jorge Matinha Cardoso | Tiny but Mighty: extracellular vesicles from cyanobacteria as a promising vaccination platform for fish

Maria Mendes da Silva | FOXM1 gene induction as an immune aging therapy

Manuel Correia | Metabolic engineering to improve the production of the compatible solute glycine betaine in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

Francisco Cadete | In vivo profiling of glucose-induced chromatin changes to understand the molecular mechanisms of diabetes development

11h30 - 12h00 Coffee Break

12h00 - 13h00 Keynote Speaker | Nadav Ahituv | Functional characterization and therapeutic targeting of gene regulatory elements

13h00 - 14h00 Lunch (not provided)

14h00 - 15h00 Students Presentations

Maria Cardona Timoner | Restraining Fibrosis: Fibroblasts as the Key to Cardiac Regeneration in the Spiny Mouse

Marta Duque | Pancreatic enhancer deletion drives acinar cell plasticity and neoplastic transformation through chromatin remodeling

João Cardoso | LAMP2 connects the autophagy-lysosomal pathway in Thymic Epithelial Cells and regulates their role in CD4 T-cell selection, TCR repertoire formation and T-cell responses

Andreia Silva | Targeting Endosomal Trafficking as a novel therapeutic approach to treat Triple Negative Breast Cancer

15h00 - 16h00 Keynote Speaker | Catarina Brito | Reconstructing Tissue Microenvironments to Understand Therapy Response

16h00 - 16h30 Sponsor talks

16h00 ABYNTEK BIOPHARMA: Optimizing the Research Workflow: Smart Sampling, Robust Reagents, Trusted Results
16h10 Novogene (UK) Company: Beyond Genomics: Exploring Multi-Omics with Novogene
16h20 Timberlake: Beyond Software: AI, Data Science and Advanced Analytics for Scientific Research. How Timberlake supports researchers through consultancy, training and advanced analytical tools

16h30 - 17h00 Awards and Closing Remarks

17h00 Chill Out

Speakers

Catarina Brito

Catarina Brito leads the Advanced Cell Models Lab at ITQB NOVA and iBET, where her preclinical and translational research focuses on how the cellular microenvironment shapes responses to targeted therapies. Her group develops advanced 3D cell models to address challenges in cancer immunotherapies and viral vector based gene therapies, with emphasis on macrophage–tumour and neuron–glia crosstalk. She has coordinated numerous competitively funded research projects, published over 90 papers, and supervised 17 PhD students. Catarina holds an MSc in Biochemistry from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from NOVA University of Lisbon, completed in collaboration with the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, followed by postdoctoral work in stem cell bioengineering at iBET.

Frank Winkler

Professor Frank Winkler is a neurologist and neuroscientist internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to the Cancer Neuroscience field. He earned his medical degree at Freiburg University, Germany, and completed a research fellowship at the Steele Lab at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2012 he was appointed assistant professor at Ludwig-Maximilian University. He is currently Managing Senior Physician in the Department of Neurology at Heidelberg University Hospital, Professor of Experimental Neuro-Oncology at Heidelberg University, and a group leader at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).

Professor Winkler’s research explores cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain tumor progression, and how therapies interfere with it. His laboratory uses advanced animal models combined with in vivo two-photon microscopy and optogenetic tools to study dynamic tumor–neural interactions, uncovering how malignant brain tumors form functional multicellular networks that drive growth, invasion, and metastasis.

In 2025, he received The Brain Prize, for his groundbreaking work on nervous system and cancer interactions. His work exemplifies the successful integration of basic neuroscience, translational research, and clinical practice, with the goal of improving outcomes for patients with devastating brain tumors. His contributions have also been recognized with the BIAL Award in Biomedicine (2024), the German Cancer Award (Translational Research; 2022), and the Sibylle Assmus Award for Neurooncology (2010).

Nadav Ahituv

Professor Nadav Ahituv is a geneticist widely recognized for his pioneering work in human genetics, gene regulation, functional genomics and gene therapy. He is a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), at the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences where he currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Human Genetics.

Ahituv earned his PhD in Human Genetics from Tel-Aviv University with distinction. His early research focused on hereditary hearing loss, contributing to the identification of genes that cause inherited deafness in humans. He completed his postdoctoral training in functional genomics at both the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the DOE Joint Genome Institute.

In 2007, Ahituv joined UCSF, where he established his laboratory focused on gene regulation, particularly on understanding how noncoding regulatory DNA elements and their variants contribute to human phenotypes and disease. His laboratory is known for pioneering massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) to functionally characterize large numbers of regulatory elements. In addition, his group has advanced innovative therapeutic approaches such as cis-regulation therapy (CRT) for haploinsufficient disorders and adipose modulation transplantation (AMT), a novel cancer therapeutic approach that utilizes engineered adipocytes to specifically target tumors.

His influential contributions to human genetics and regulatory genomics have earned him major distinctions, including the ASHG Scientific Achievement Award (2024) and the Leon I. Goldberg Young Investigator Award (2014), establishing him as a leading figure in the field.

Soyon Hong

Dr Soyon Hong is a neuroscientist internationally recognized for her pioneering research on the cellular and immune mechanisms that regulate synaptic health and dysfunction. She earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Harvard University in 2012 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, contributing to identifying microglia as key mediator of synapse loss in models of neurodegenerative disease. In 2018, Dr. Hong established her independent laboratory at the UK Dementia Research Institute (DRI) at University College London, leading a program on neuro-glia-immune interactions.

Her lab focuses on how microglia and other glial cells coordinate with immune signals to regulate synapse fate and neural circuit integrity in conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Using cutting-edge microscopy alongside functional models, her team explores the cellular mechanisms underlying synaptic vulnerability and circuit dysfunction, focusing on how glial crosstalk breaks down in disease, and how immune signalling across brain borders modulates neuronal and synaptic function.

For her work, Dr. Hong was named the 2023 Alzheimer’s Research UK David Hague Early Career Investigator of the Year, and was awarded Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Neurodegeneration Challenge Network Collaborators Grant in 2022.

Tâm Mignot

Professor Tâm Mignot is a French microbiologist internationally recognized for his contributions to bacterial cell biology, motility, and predation. He obtained his PhD in 2002 from the Pasteur Institute (France), where he studied the structure of the Bacillus anthracis cell surface. He then joined the laboratory of Professor David Zusman at the University of California to study the mechanism of Myxocococus xanthus motility, developing pioneering single-cell approaches to analyse bacterial movement.

In 2007, Professor Mignot secured a CNRS position at the Laboratoire de Chimie Bactérienne (CLB) in Marseille to establish his research group. His laboratory aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of motility and bacterial predation using M. xanthus as a model organism. His work has led to major advances in understanding surface motility systems, collective bacterial behaviors, and the organization of motility complexes.

In 2018, Professor Mignot became the Director of the Laboratoire de Chimie Bactérienne, where he leads a multidisciplinary research environment combining microbiology, biophysics, imaging, and quantitative approaches. His scientific excellence has been recognized by numerous honors, including the CNRS Bronze Medal (2011), the Loréal-Bettencourt-Schueller «coup d’élan pour la recherche française» Prize (2011), and the CNRS Silver Medal (2023). In 2023, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in recognition of his outstanding contributions to microbiology and bacterial cell biology.

Abstract Submission

The call for abstracts will be open until 20th February (notification of acceptance on 2nd March 2026). Abstract submission is open for McBiology students only.

Types of presentations in this event:

Short Talk (oral): 10min presentation +5min discussion, with ppt., Auditorium Mariano Gago
Poster Presentation: 60min poster session on the first day at i3S main entrance

Abstracts should be structured according to the following template:

Abstracts layout »

Abstract submission form »