Maria Pedro Silva Email & Phone Number

Since I was a child, my biggest hope was to practice medicine. However, the future pushed me into another direction, maybe because of my sharpened sense of curiosity. After my degree in Biology, I was forced to choose between research, animal behavior, or teaching. I have no doubts that my curiosity guided me to think that: "Well, Maria! If you are not a Doctor that could take care of your patients in a very closed way, you can "simply" investigate for their sake. During my curricular internship, I was able to endorse the group of Physiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery Department of the Faculty of Medicine of Porto, where I was able to be in touch with very experienced people in cardiac insufficiency, whose main focus was to study the impact of neuregulin in attenuating right ventricular hypertrophy and dysfunction in an experimental model of pulmonary hypertension. This experience was the fuel to take my first steps in research, boosting me to pursue my ultimate goal of translational research. After my master's degree and especially during my Ph.D. program in Pathology and Molecular Genetics, I could be trained to become a devote scientist and work independently. I think that academia shaped me in a very interesting way. The sense of responsibility, as I had the opportunity to work with biological samples of Prostate Cancer patients, the resilience that I adopted as my middle name, the critical thinking during the adversities that happen in our path and paint our day in the dark scale... However, all of the "falls" make us stronger and problem-solvers, since we need to manage workload through prioritization when working with a tight deadline and milestones. As a scientist, I was trained how to learn, how to design the strategy to finally achieve the answer and tackle the limitations. I have also learned to "work hard and never admire my science, as it can always be better" (Jacob Hanna).

Listed skills include Data Analysis, Spss, Research, Windows, and 9 others.