Marcelina Węzik graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from the University of Wroclaw (Poland) in 2018. During an Erasmus exchange at the University of Barcelona, she developed a strong interest in reward-related neural circuits. To pursue a Master’s degree in Neuroscience she moved to Italy to study at the University of Trieste. During her Master’s studies, she carried out her thesis project internship at ICVS (supervision of Ana Joao Rodrigues, PhD and Carina Cunha, PhD), focused on validating newly developed endogenous opioid sensors in-vivo using fiber photometry in mice during rewarding and aversive events. Following her Master’s degree, she worked as a research technician, working on an unbiased whole-brain analysis using the TRAP mouse model to map neuronal activity during rewarding and aversive events. She is currently a PhD student in Biomedicine and Health Sciences (Neuroscience) at the University of Minho and a visiting doctoral student at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) (supervision of Michael Bruchas, PhD). Her doctoral research investigates how endogenous opioids regulate neuronal circuits underlying associative learning, particularly within the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area, combining animal behavior, optogenetic and pharmacological manipulations, fiber photometry and 2-Photon imaging.