I earned my PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and completed my postdoctoral training in Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
After my postdoctoral training, I returned to Brazil to establish my research program at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, where I worked for approximately 10 years. In 2006, I returned to the United States for a 1-year sabbatical at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX and was invited to join the faculty at the Division of Hypothalamic Research. In 2013, I moved my laboratory to the University of Michigan in Ann Abor, MI.
I currently hold the position of Professor in the Departments of Molecular & Integrative Physiology and of Obstetrics & Gynecology. I am the Director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Director of the Michigan Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center (MMPC-Live), a National Center funded by the NIDDK. I am a member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences (ACAL) and a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS).