Andre Marques-Smith
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, UK
Andre did an undergraduate degree in Psychology, at University of Minho. He then moved to the University of Oxford, where he completed the Wellcome-Trust PhD programme in Neuroscience with Zoltan Molnar and Simon Butt, using slice electrophysiology, optogenetics and glutamate uncaging to map early circuits between excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the cortex. He followed up this research during a postdoc with Beatriz Rico at King’s College London. He is currently a Sir Henry-Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, where he collaborates with Sonja Hofer and Adam Kampff on investigating the anatomy, electrophysiology and in vivo role of inhibitory circuits in the thalamus. Andre has extensive experience with patch-clamp electrophysiology in vitro and in vivo, as well as extracellular recordings in vivo with state-of-the-art Neuropixels probes.
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Gonçalo Lopes
NeuroGEARS Ltd
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, UK
Gonçalo moved from software engineering to neuroscience to study the behaviour of intelligent systems. He joined the Champalimaud Foundation Neuroscience Programme and completed his PhD with Adam Kampff and Joe Paton, studying the role of motor cortex in the robust control of movement. Gonçalo developed the Bonsai visual programming language as a way to rapidly prototype real-time closed loop behavioral experiments and automating data acquisition protocols for neurophysiology. He followed up this research at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in London, before deciding to start a technology company, NeuroGEARS Ltd, with the goal of empowering scientists to build their own tools. Gonçalo regularly teaches about technology and behavior in many hands-on experimental courses like TENSS or BNS, where he shares his experience developing interactive real-time systems.

Hugo Almeida
Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
ICVS/3B's - PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal
Hugo Leite-Almeida is a researcher at the ICVS/3B’s PT-Government Associate Laboratory and teaches in undergraduate (e.g. histology) as well as in multiple post graduation courses (e.g. Fundamentals in Neurosciences) at the School of Medicine, University of Minho. He holds a BSc degree in Biochemistry (University of Porto) and a PhD degree in Health Sciences (University of Minho). His main line of research deals with the causality relation between peripheral neuropathies and pain, mood and cognitive function. From a methodological point of view, his approaches have been diverse and include anatomical tracing, stereology, electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry, HPLC and rodent behavior. He and his colleagues have been developing diverse behavioral paradigms like the variable delay-to-signal (VDS) for impulsivity assessment in rodents. He received the Early Career Research grant from the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)I in 2015.

Patrícia Monteiro
Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
ICVS/3B's - PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal
Patricia Monteiro is a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Domain, ICVS/School of Medicine, University of Minho. She holds a BSc/MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (University of Coimbra) and a PhD degree in Neurosciences (international PhD program in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine, University of Coimbra). She did her Ph.D. training with Dr. Guoping Feng at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA), where she focused on understanding brain circuitry mechanisms underlying repetitive behaviors present in obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and autism-spectrum disorders (ASD). During her postdoc, Patricia has been awarded an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship as well as a Branco Weiss fellowship, to study how stress impacts brain networks. Her research at ICVS now focuses on new approaches to tackle brain disorders. Patricia has extensive experience with patch-clamp electrophysiology in vitro and ex vivo, as well as transgenic mice and molecular biochemistry.
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