Ana concluded her BSc degree in Biology in 2021 at the Faculty of Sciences (University of Porto), where she performed an internship in the Glial Cell Biology Group at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S). There she studied the beneficial effect of overexpressing the vitamin C transporter (SVCT2) in microglia to improve learning and memory deficits in Parkinson’s disease (PD). She continued for another two years at the same laboratory for her MSc in Neurobiology, at the Faculty of Medicine (University of Porto). Additionally, she received two research fellowship at the laboratory to understand the impact of SVCT2 overexpression in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Given this, she continued her previous PD project alongside her AD work, combining both in her MSc thesis. As her interests lay beyond the laboratorial work, she enjoys science communication, leading her to present her work in 10 conferences, 4 of them in the form of oral communication. Her group findings in AD lead to an abstract publication in the Journal of Neurochemistry and a Pre-print in 2024 entitled “Increasing the vitamin C transporter SVCT2 in microglia improves synaptic plasticity and restrains memory impairments in Alzheimer’s disease models”. For two consecutive years, Catarina was honored with the first prize in the Neuroscience Parallel Oral Session and the First Prize in The Plenary Session with her work on PD in 2022 and AD in 2023. Since January 2024, she became a visiting researcher at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute in the Brain Circuits and Neuron-glia Adaptations group and is currently starting her PhD under Dr. Luísa Pinto’s supervision.