Conservation in Socio-Ecological Systems - CSES
Landscape Epidemiology and Wildlife Diseases

Daniela Pinto

Assistant Researcher

Microbiologia Bacteriologia Bioinformática Biologia Sintética

I received a Ph.D. in Biology (Microbiology) from the University of Lisbon in 2013. I am currently working in the "Landscape Epidemiology and Wildlife Diseases" Subgroup of cE3c as an Assistant Researcher hired in the scope of project "COLOSSUS: Control Of tubercuLOsiS at the wildlife/livestock interface uSing innovative natUre-based Solutions". My research focuses on the transmission dynamics of Mycobacterium bovis, the etiological agent of animal tuberculosis, at the wildlife-livestock interface.

For many years I have been involved in research on the mechanisms bacteria use to cope with environmental stresses they face in their ecological niches, using as model systems mostly gram-positive bacteria (Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus subtilis, and Staphylococcus aureus).

Past Post-Doc positions include those at the Ludwig-Maximillians University Munich (Germany) and Technical University of Dresden (Germany) partially funded by a Marie-Curie IEF fellowship (2014-2019) and at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon (Portugal, 2020-2022).

My research is driven by three overarching objectives: understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which bacteria cope with environmental stress, engineer bacterial systems to build biological devices with new and useful functions (Synthetic Biology) and take advantage of the large datasets provided by recent genomics approaches to advance strategies related with infection control.