Doctor Ricardo Silvestre has officially taken office as the new Vice-Director of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS) at the School of Medicine, University of Minho, succeeding Doctor Agostinho Carvalho, who left the position to assume the role of Vice-President for Research at the School of Medicine.
Silvestre graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2003) and earned his PhD (2007) at the University of Porto. Early in his career, he worked at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, studying Plasmodium falciparum, and later focused on Leishmania epigenetics and vaccine development. His postdoctoral work in France and Portugal investigated mitochondrial dynamics in HIV infection and host immune mechanisms in leishmaniasis.
Currently a Principal Investigator at ICVS, Ricardo Silvestre studies how metabolic and bioenergetic changes in host cells during infection or inflammation affect immune function and tissue homeostasis, aiming to develop new preventive and therapeutic strategies.
