Dr. João Paulo Oliveira was born in 1957, in Coimbra. He currently serves as Director of the Service of Medical Genetics of São João University Hospital Centre (CHUSJ), in Porto, and as Associate Professor of Genetics at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto (FMUP). Since 1999 he has also served as Medical Director of a private outpatient dialysis clinic from of Fresenius Medical Care group, in Santa Maria da Feira.

Dr. Oliveira graduated from FMUP in 1981 and completed his post-graduate training in Nephrology between 1985 and 1990, at CHUSJ. In 1990, he took a post-graduate course in Nephrology at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, which included full-time clinical training in peritoneal dialysis at the Department of Nephrology, Meir Hospital, in Kfar-Saba, under the supervision of Prof. Jacques Bernheim. Between 1995 and 2005 he served as the physician-in-charge of the peritoneal dialysis program of the Department of Nephrology, CHUSJ, and in 2008 he was appointed as a chief doctor in Nephrology.

Dr. Oliveira obtained the MSc degree on Medical Genetics in 1990, and the PhD degree on Medicine (Genetics) in 2008, both from FMUP. Later in 2008 he was assigned the mission of installing the CHUSJ Service of Medical Genetics.

Dr. Oliveira's major clinical and research interests are the hereditary diseases of the kidney, especially Fabry disease, which was the subject of his PhD thesis. He is a member of the European Advisory Board of the Fabry Registry, has actively collaborated in several international research projects on Fabry disease and chaired an international study group of Fabry nephropathy. He was the principal investigator of two national collaborative research projects on Alport syndrome, funded by grants from the Portuguese Society of Nephrology (SPN) and the Foundation for the Science and Technology (FCT). Since its formation, Dr. Oliveira has been the leader the research program on the genetics of kidney diseases of the Nephrology and Infectious Diseases Research and Development Unit, hosted at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (INEB).

Dr. Oliveira is a full member of the SPN, of the European Renal Association - European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA), of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN), and of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) and served mandates at the Directive Board of the College of Nephrology of the Portuguese Order of Physicians, as well as at the Scientific Council and the Directive Board of the SPN.