Duarte Ferreira
Assistant Professor
Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live
Lab member
2013 - 2018
Current position
Assistant Professor at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Since an early age I said that I wanted to be a scientist or a teacher. While growing up, I thought that I had to choose between one or the other. Funnily enough, I am doing both now. At the age of 17 I moved to Lisbon to pursue an integrated master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Faculty of Pharmacy. My appeal towards Pharmacy came from my curiosity to understand how drugs and medicines act in the human body. My science adventure started when I did my PhD at Professor Rodrigues’ lab (iMed.UL, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon) to investigate Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in morbid obese patients. At the same time, I worked as a pharmacist in a neighborhood pharmacy – somehow it is important for me to keep contact with people. I always had a fascination for winter landscapes so after completing my PhD, I didn’t hesitate to move to Stockholm, Sweden when the opportunity arise to do a postdoc there. During the postdoc I worked in skeletal muscle with Dr. Ruas at Karolinska Institutet. Karolinska has been my home for 7 years now, and aside to the research started during my postdoc, I am teaching Pharmacology and Physiology to different programs. I am very glad that Karolinska allowed me to fulfil that boy’s dream :).