Joana Palha

Career

Palha is a neuroscientist whose work has focused mainly on iodine nutrition, endocrinology (thyroid), pregnancy, ageing and the barriers of the brain. She began working in New York in 1995 as a post-doctoral fellow at the New York University Medical Center, after completing her PhD. From 1996 to 1999, she was an assistant professor at the Instituto Superior de Ciências da Saúde Egas Moniz in Gandra, Portugal. She then moved to the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular in Porto before, in 2001, joining the University of Minho medical school as an assistant professor. She was made an associate professor in 2005 and promoted to full professor in 2010. From 2013 to 2015, Palha was a visiting scientist at the Ageing Research Centre of the Karolinska Institute.

Palha's studies on thyroid hormones during pregnancy contributed to the current Portuguese guidelines for iodine supplementation to pregnant women. She is a member of a wide range of medical organizations, on which she has served as a member of the board or of various committees, including the Society for Neuroscience in Washington D.C., the International Brain Research Organization in Paris, the Scientific Council of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT), which is the organization in Portugal that decides on funding allocation for research, and on the committee of senior officials for the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). She has been a member of the jury of several international prizes.

In addition to the FCT, Palha has also reviewed project proposals for international funding agencies such as the European Commission; the National Science Foundation, USA; the Alzheimer's Research Foundation; and the Fulbright Program. She is an associate editor of Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, Journal of Molecular Neuroscience and Neurology, Psychiatry and Brain Research and is a reviewer for several other journals.