Ana Isabel Pinto completed her PhD in 2016, after working in immunoparasitology in the group of Paul Kaye in the University of York (United Kingdom). During her PhD, she focused on studying the impact of the inflammatory response on alterations in hematopoiesis. Her work was funded by the European Union FP7 Marie Curie-ITN program and resulted a major first author publication in the PLOS Pathogens journal, in 2017 (doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006465). Following the completion of her PhD, Ana have been collaborating with Paul Kaye´s group, being co-author in the recently published paper in Nature Communications, ((doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00103-8), 2017) .

Since 2016, Ana is studying the impact of immune dysfunction on cellular ontogeny and the establishment of immune pathology, developing her post-doctoral work as an associated researcher in the Centre of Immunology and Infection (University of York, UK). Under the supervision of Dr Allison Green, a world-leading scientist in the study of Type 1 diabetes, she is currently developing a project focused on the role of B cells in the generation of auto-reactive T cells during thymic development, funded by Diabetes UK. The research developed so far has resulted in a first-author in a paper published by Frontiers Immunology journal (‘Thymic B cell-mediated attach of thymic stroma precedes Type 1 Diabetes development’) and is on the basis for a successful funding application to ‘The centre for Future Health’ (University of York).

Ana’s commitment to scientific outreach lead her over the past two years to collaborate with Dr. Allison Green in the organization of regular informal meetings with members the York and District Diabetes UK groups, consisting of diabetes patients and their carers.

In 2016, Ana was awarded the participation in the Wellcome Trust’s pilot ‘International Funders' Award in Management Skills for Researchers (IFA)', an award jointly administered by the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Medical Research Council, the Institut Pasteur and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

At present, Ana is focusing her research on the elucidation of mechanisms required for the establishment of immune responses in experimental model of visceral leishmaniasis.