Graça Porto graduated in Medicine in 1979 at the University of Porto and specialized in Hematology/Transfusion Medicine at Santo António Hospital, Porto, where she holds a permanent clinical position, presently as Chief Consultant. Her clinical work was mostly devoted to the study of disorders of iron metabolism, running the Hospital Outpatient Clinic for Hemochromatosis. At the Abel Salazar Institute for Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) she studied with Maria de Sousa the hematological and immunological aspects of Hereditary Hemochromatosis, earning her PhD at the University of Porto and joining the ICBAS faculty as invited full Professor. In 2003 she joined, as clinical researcher, the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC), Porto, and there created in 2011 a translational research group devoted to the study of iron biology and its implications in iron related disorders. The general objective of the group is focused on the reciprocal interactions between cells of the immune system and the regulation of systemic iron homeostasis, following her previous work where significant associations between immune cell defects and the severity of systemic iron overload were originally described both in animal models and in patients with Hereditary Hemochromatosis.