Susana Monteiro is a Junior Researcher at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS) – University of Minho. She completed her MSc in 2008 (University of Bristol, UK and Universidade de Aveiro) and PhD in 2016 (Universidade do Minho). During her scientific training, she was involved in multiple research projects in the Neuroimmunology field – from clinical research searching for multiple sclerosis biomarkers to basic research understanding how the autonomic deregulation caused by chronic stress exposure impacts immunity. In 2016 she joined the ReNEU team for her postdoc working within the Basic Mechanisms of Injury/Degeneration research topic. She has been particularly interested into the contribution of inflammation for Spinal Cord Injury pathophysiology and conversely, how injury to the spinal cord affects the immune system functioning. Her current research interests are: 1) understanding how to engage efficient immune responses to CNS injury repair by manipulating peripheral autonomic neural circuits. 2) exploring how peripheral immune cells shape microglia behavior and CNS local inflammation. 3) identifying peripheral targets for CNS immunomodulation and validate them in translational/clinical studies