Isabel is a Research Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts (USA). In her current position she is investigating protective mechanisms to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, with a special interest in single cell and spatial transcriptomics.
Originall from Ponta Delgada, São Miguel island (Azores, Portugal), and Isabel moved to Exeter (United Kingdom) in 2015 to join the University of Exeter as a PhD student. In Exeter, she worked with Professor Jonathan Mill and Professor Katie Lunnon at the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group at the University of Exeter Medical School. Her PhD research focused on investigating (epi)genomics of Alzheimer’s disease, using mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology.
Her work used to be split between long weeks in the lab running experiments, and days spent developing scripts for complex bioinformatics analyses, but she recently put down the pipettes completely to dedicate herself to building computational biology models using bioinformatics. She was recruited by Dr Winston Hide to join his lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow since January 2021.
Passionate about her work (& life), Isabel is naturally curious and eager for knowledge. She is an advocate of open, transparent and good quality science, and defends a rigorous but kind research culture.