SYNOPSIS
João received his MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2009. His MSc thesis in bioinformatics and machine learning approaches to genetic data was carried in the University of Pavia, Italy. He completed his PhD in Health Sciences - Biomedical Sciences in 2016, in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (FMUC), during which he was particularly interested in the application of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalographic (EEG) data to study cognitive neuroscience and visual perception in humans. In parallel, he collaborated in several medical imaging projects, including multivariate data analysis, statistical classification, and development of brain imaging biomarkers in clinical populations (e.g., genetic Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, Diabetes type 2 and Neurofibromatosis type 1). As a postdoc he worked in a project with the objective of using multimodal medical imaging data (fMRI and functional near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS) to predict neurodevelopmental outcome in newborns with perinatal asphyxia.
João was awarded a competitive Junior Researcher contract (FCT Individual Scientific Employment Program CEEC 2017) and he is the Principal Investigator of a competitive FCT-funded project “Novel multimodal imaging biomarkers of neuronal connectivity in Multiple Sclerosis”, as well as co-investigator in several other scientific projects developing novel medical neuroimaging biomarkers in other neurological and psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism). He is currently a junior researcher at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, and an integrated member of the Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), doing research in neuroimaging and machine learning applied to both basic and translational neuroscience. He authored/co-authored 29 articles in journals and conferences, 4 as last author, in which he interacted with +90 collaborators. He has received 4 awards for scientific outputs, including the 1st prize of Janssen Neuroscience Real World Evidence Award 2019 - Clinical Series: Investigating neuroimaging biomarkers in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He serves as invited reviewer for multidisciplinary journals (e.g., PLOS One, Neuroimage, Human Brain Mapping, Scientific Reports), and he is the coordinator of a research topic article collection in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
João regularly assists lecturing in medical imaging seminars for undergraduate students (MSc in Biomedical Engineering) and doctoral courses in medical imaging (PhD Program in Health Sciences, FMUC; and PhD Program in Biomedical Engineering, FCTUC). He co-supervised 7 MSc (2 ongoing) and 3 PhD (ongoing) students, as well as mentored several undergraduate students of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering in lab rotations and summer internships. He was also a member of the examination committees of several MSc and PhD project evaluations.
João has been involved in science dissemination events (e.g., in schools, Brain Awareness Week) and organization of scientific conferences. Namely, he co-organized the 7th Iberian Congress on Perception in Coimbra in 2017, the 1st ISMRM Iberian Chapter Annual Meeting in 2021, and he was the organizer of a symposium at the FENS Regional Meeting (FRM) 2021 entitled “Brain imaging in neuropsychiatric disorders: innovation and translation”.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Biomedical engineering - Medical imaging biomarkers - Neuroscience - Neuroimaging and electrophysiology - Pattern recognition and machine learning - Brain diseases – Multiple Sclerosis – Schizophrenia – Bipolar Disorder - Visual perception and decision making - Biological motion
Full CV here (pdf). [last update 05-08-2022]
Short CV here (pdf). [last update 05-08-2022]
Contact informations here.
Personal webpage here.