My name is Celso Martins, freshly arrived from Portugal.

I initiated my research career during my B.Sc. in Biology (University of Aveiro, Portugal), when I studied the effects of water hardness and alkalinity in a tiny freshwater cladoceran called Daphnia longispina.

However, I felt dragged to even smaller organisms, so I decided to take an M.Sc. in Microbiology ((University of Aveiro and ISCSEM, Portugal), in which I explored the effects that some antimicrobial polymers (won’t bother you with the names) exerted in the human oral microbiome. Then I spent a few months in a clinical diagnostic team performing molecular studies in cancer and prenatal disorders (Labco Porto, Portugal). After this short experience in a clinical environment, all I wanted was to go back to research! Therefore, I joined Professor Cristina Silva Pereira’s team (ITQB NOVA, Portugal), first as a Research Fellow and later as a PhD student.

My PhD focused on the (nasty) effects that pollutants exert in the soil mycobiota and ultimately revealed that the exposure to those pollutants (and their subsequent biodegradation) elicited molecular tradeoffs related to increased pathogenesis in fungi.

I am now delighted to join Vjestica Lab to explore an entirely new world related to the transcriptional events during and after fission yeast zygotic transition.