Renata Freitas graduated in Biology from the Faculty of Science/University of Porto in 1996. The undergraduate internship was carried out at the Federal University of Amazonas in Brazil and gave rise to her first publication in a book on a topic concerning Animal Behaviour and Ecology. She then was selected for a prestigious Ph.D. program in Portugal (GABBA Program) that allowed her to conduct the thesis at the University of Reading (UK) under the supervision of Professor Martin J. Cohn and to work within the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Three years later, the research team moved to the University of Florida (USA), where Renata Freitas obtained a contract as a Research Assistant. This period resulted in 5 publications as first author some of them in high-impact journals (Nature, Developmental Cells). After three, Renata Freitas returned to Portugal to present her Ph.D. thesis and obtained a post-doctoral fellowship for a short period while preparing the publications and grant applications that made possible her post-doctoral training at CABD (Spain). During that time she was supervised by Professor José Luís Gomez-Skarmeta and obtained financial support from EMBO, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and FCT (Portuguese agency). This period culminated with an article in a high-impact journal (Developmental Cell).

At the end of 2012, Renata Freitas returned to Portugal, starting her research team at IBMC/UP and receiving the prestigious FCT Researcher contract in 2014. The IBMC was then incorporated into a consortium of research institutes (I3S) where Renata Freitas is currently a team leader, integrated into the Cell Growth Differentiation Group. Her team explores the function of genes involved in embryonic development in contexts of morphological evolution or tumour progression, to unravel the molecular mechanisms associated with these processes. Her team identified targets affected by HOX gene modulation in breast cancer (e.g. BBACAN 2020, Biomedicines 2021) and continued to conduct studies in the area of Evo-Devo (e.g. Genetics, 2020; Scientific Reports, 2021; Evolution, 2023). Furthermore, in collaboration with colleagues from I3s and the University of Coimbra and Évora, she began testing new drugs for cancer treatment, having already published an article in this new line of research (RSC Medical Chemistry, 2022). This work has proven to be interesting, also from a pedagogical perspective, making it possible to carry out 8 scientific initiation internships during this academic year. In summary, her scientific activity gave rise to the publication of 25 articles and 5 conference/book publications. In the majority of these publications, Renata Freitas appears as the first author (38%) or corresponding author (46%).

Developmental Biology, Evolution, Oncobiology