I was born in Philadelphia and attended Wesleyan University in CT, USA, where I fell in love with neuroscience. I received my PhD in 2005 from the University of California, San Francisco, and was a postdoc at Harvard Medical School from 2005-2010. I started my independent laboratory at the then brand-new Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal in 2010 before making the move to Oxford in 2026. 

My research combines quantitative behavioural analysis, genetics, and physiology to understand how the brain controls learned and coordinated movement. Our work is highly interdisciplinary and has broad relevance in the areas of motor control, learning & memory, and neurorehabilitation; it reflects the synthesis of my previous training in systems neuroscience, cellular neurophysiology, and neuroethology. 

My lab’s major achievements so far include 1) Establishing a quantitative framework for mouse locomotor coordination (Machado et al eLife 2015, Gonçalves et al Current Opinion in Neurobiology 2022) and using it to identify specific cerebellar contributions to this complex, whole-body behaviour (e.g. Darmohray et al Neuron 2019, Machado et al eLife 2020). 2) Using modern tools for genetic circuit dissection to answer longstanding questions about the contributions of specific plasticity mechanisms to learning (Broersen et al Nature Communications 2023, Silva et al Nature Neuroscience 2024). 3) Discovering mechanisms for the modulation of associative learning by behavioural state (Albergaria et al Nature Neuroscience 2018; Albergaria et al eLife 2020; Silva et al bioRxiv 2024).

Alongside my scientific research I also work actively to improve research culture and build diverse, international communities of scientists, through policy work and organisation of conferences and scientific networks.