Jorge Ruas

I was born on the island of Madeira (Portugal) but grew up across the city of Lisbon, very close to the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. I got my Pharm.D. degree from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon, and that was also where I started my research explorations by performing several internships in different scientific areas. After university, I worked in a research lab at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Oeiras, Portugal), where I was first introduced to the field of regulation of gene expression. I continued my studies in transcriptional regulation of gene expression at Karolinska Institutet (KI), with an internship at The Rockefeller University (New York, USA), and got my PhD in Medical Sciences – cell and molecular biology. I then moved to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA) for my postdoctoral studies in transcriptional regulation of skeletal muscle function. In 2011, I moved back to KI to the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology as an Assistant Professor and started my research group on molecular & cellular exercise physiology. In 2016 I became Associate Professor, and in 2020 Professor of Molecular Physiology at KI. In 2023, I joined the Department of Pharmacology and The Stanley and Judith Frankel Institute for Heart & Brain Health at the University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) as Professor of Pharmacology. My goals are to continue to ensure a stimulating research environment in our group, to develop exciting projects to identify the molecular mediators of the health benefits of exercise, and to use this knowledge to develop novel disease therapies.