Pedro Almeida

Pedro is an Evolutionary Biologist with a PhD in Biology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), Portugal, where he started using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) data to understand the genomic modifications associated with microbe domestication.

Before working at HeartGenetics, Pedro was a post-doc Research Associate at University College London, UK. Using data from multiple NGS technologies, he designed computational approaches for the detection of sex-linked variation. His research aimed to understand the extension and patterns of genomic variation during the early stages of sex chromosome differentiation, one of the most challenging regions of the genome to study, and consequently the evolutionary dynamics of recombination suppression in natural populations.

Pedro has developed collaborative work worldwide with teams from the UK, Sweden, Canada and China, and has published more than a dozen of research papers in high profile journals, including Nature Communications and Nature Ecology & Evolution, among others. At the same time, he has also given back to the scientific community serving as peer-reviewer for several scientific journals.

He is currently interested in personal genomics and the progress towards establishing personalised medicine both as a diagnostic and preventive tool.