Tomás Rocha holds a B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Biomedicine at the School of Medicine, University of Minho. He is carrying out his Master’s dissertation project at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), under the supervision of Dr Joana Pereira-Sousa and Dr Nuno Osório. Using tools for differential gene expression analysis and interpretable machine learning, and taking advantage of C. elegans genetic modelling, his project aims to explore the gene networks that may underlie serotonin-mediated phenotype rescue in Machado–Joseph disease and to functionally validate the results in vivo.