From May 2025, I will be starting a postdoctoral position at Dr Lauren Atlas' Affective Neuroscience and Pain Lab at NCCIH, where I will be using machine learning to analyze facial expressions of pain. The project will be in collaboration with NIMH Machine Learning Team.
I am currently finishing my PhD at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), NIH, USA. At the NIH, I am co-supervised by Dr Daniel Pine at the Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience (SDAN) and Dr Bruno Averbeck at the Laboratory of Neuropsychology, and mentored by Dr Dylan Nielson at the NIMH Machine Learning Team. I am also mentored by Prof Argyris Stringaris at the UCL. My host academic institution is the University of Lisbon in Portugal, where I am a member of Dr Diana Prata's lab.
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My overarching research interest is affective neuroscience. Over the course of my PhD, I was involved in various projects that address diagnosis and treatment of adolescent and adult depression. Specifically, I worked with children's multimodal data to validate depression measurements and gather insights in topics such as informant discrepancy (parent-child disagreement on whether the child is depressed) (preprint). I've also contributed to collecting and analyzing multi-echo MRI data with the goal of improving targeting of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) for treatment-resistant depression (pilot dataset). I am also interested in neuropsychoendocrinology, specifically in the effect of oxytocin on human brain (paper) and its role in various psychiatric disorders, and also in and the role of dopamine and serotonin in affective disorders.
Before joining NIMH, I spent a few years doing social neuroscience research
at Diana Prata's Lab. In particular, I looked at the effect of oxytocin on human
resting-state EEG (2022 paper in Cerebral Cortex).
Before that, I obtained an MSc in Neurobiology from the University of Porto and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh,
where I analyzed human eye-tracking data. From my studies at the University of Edinburgh, I have a background in Natural Language Processing.
I work with large datasets and apply a variety of computational tools to analyze them. As far as programming languages go, I'm most comfortable with Python, but I've also been exposed to R and Matlab.
For statistical analysis, I've used SPSS, but I prefer R or R wrappers in Python.
I live with bipolar disorder type 1.
Outside of research, I enjoy spending time in nature (hiking, backpacking, camping) and board games. I am also a theatre lover and a travel enthusiast.