Maria completed her MSc in Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Porto (FPCEUP - UP), in 2022.  Her dissertation focused on developing and assessing a narrative support intervention for persons with hereditary ataxia. During this time, she also did her academic internship with the multidisciplinary team of the presymptomatic testing protocol for late-onset neurological disorders at CGPP-IBMC.
Maria’s research interests revolve around health psychology, genetic counselling, and the psychosocial aspects of hereditary conditions. Since 2023, she has been a PhD student in the Doctoral Programme in Psychology (FPCEUP - UP) and is a research fellow at i3S as part of DECIDE (https://decide.i3s.up.pt/pt/) an FCT-funded project (2022.04025.PTDC). Her research project, supervised by Célia Sales (FPCEUP - UP), Álvaro Mendes (CGPP, IBMC - i3S) and Milena Paneque (CGPP, IBMC - i3S), aims to uncover the trajectory of patient decision-making regarding disclosure of genetic risk information to family members, focusing on how decision-making evolves through time, what factors influence patient deliberations and how they interact.