Maria Joana Pinto has a PhD in Neuroscience and Disease by the doctoral Program in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine at the University of Coimbra, working on the axonal mechanisms supporting synapse formation. She pursued her studies as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of synapse biology at Institut de Biologie de l´École Normale Supérieure (IBENS) in Paris to study the role of microglia in synaptic plasticity and sleep. Her work was funded by an EMBO long-term fellowship and a Labex MemoLife postdoctoral fellowship. Interested in understanding how microglia control brain development and behavior, she then joined the Laboratory of Neuronal Circuits and Behavior at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology in Coimbra. She has recently joined the Synapse Biology Group at i3S to explore the role of astrocytes on the formation and function of inhibitory synapses and relevance to the etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders.