Bruna Ferreira-Lomba holds a B.Sc. in Applied Biology (2017) and a M.Sc. in Health Sciences (2020) from the University of Minho. Her motivation is to contribute to decipher Machado-Joseph Disease (MJD) pathogenesis and to cooperate in the development of a disease-modifying treatment capable to stall or revert MJD progression, to ultimately provide a better quality of life to the patients and their caregivers. Based on this purpose, she is working in Neurosciences research at Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), since 2017. During her bachelor’s degree project, she studied the pharmacological modulation of serotonergic signaling in the motor behavior of the Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model of MJD. In her master’s degree dissertation, she focused on the analysis of the therapeutic modulation of serotonergic signaling in C. elegans models of proteotoxicity, expressing neuronal proteostasis sensor proteins. She worked as a research technician to determine the efficacy of NLX-112 using the MJD mouse model, financed by the USA Department of Defense. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in Biomedicine and Health Sciences, under the supervision of Dr. Andreia Teixeira-Castro and Dr. Rogério Pirraco. She possesses experience in biochemical techniques and behavior analysis using C. elegans and Mus musculus models. Bruna published 3 peer-reviewed articles, contributed to 4 selected oral presentations and 48 conference posters, and received 2 best poster awards. She is interested in scientific communication, being actively involved in the organization of scientific workshops/events, such as the coordination of the annual event of the Rare Disease Day celebration at ICVS since 2021.