Joana Rolo is an guest Auxiliary Professor at the University of Beira Interior. She completed her PhD in Molecular Biology in 2016 at Nova University Lisbon. Joana Rolo focused on the role of mobile genetic elements in the evolution and adaptation to a host of skin bacterial commensals. In 2017, Rolo was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the FCT to develop her work and her scientific career at the Centro de Investigação em Ciências da Saúde of the University of Beira Interior (CICS-UBI) in collaboration with the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra. Her research interests have been focused on host-pathogen interactions, both in the basic molecular mechanisms and cues used by the pathogens to persist in mucosae, and also on their immunomodulatory ability of the host immune defenses.