Gabriel Augusto Pires de Souza is a Young Group Leader at the Instituto Gonçalo Moniz (Fiocruz-Bahia) and SENAI CIMATEC, Brazil. He completed his PhD in Microbiology at Aix-Marseille Université, France, and received the Best PhD Thesis Award (2023) from the Institut Hospitalier Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection. He has led and contributed to projects in pandemic preparedness, antiviral assay development, and emerging virus research, including the establishment of high-content imaging-based screening platforms through his involvement with the VirusBank initiative in Belgium. His research interests include emerging arboviruses, nanovaccines, pandemic preparedness, reporter virus systems, and high-content phenotypic screening for antiviral discovery.