David Gonçalves

David Gonçalves was recently appointed as Associate Professor at ISPA – Instituto Universitário. Prior to this, he served at the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) in Macao, where he was Dean of the Institute of Science and Environment from 2014 to 2024 and coordinated the university’s doctoral program from 2013 to 2020. He currently retains an Associate Professor appointment at USJ under a joint agreement established between ISPA and USJ and coordinates the Master’s degree in Neuroscience and Behaviour, a collaborative program between both institutions. His research focuses on the physiological mechanisms and evolutionary implications of animal behavior, with particular emphasis on the genomic and neuroendocrine bases of behavioral plasticity and adaptation. He has worked extensively with fish models, including the blenny Salaria pavo, the Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens, and the marine medaka Oryzias melastigma, to investigate how hormones and genes shape social and reproductive behaviors. His integrative approach combines methods from ethology, endocrinology, molecular biology, neuroscience, immunohistochemistry, and transcriptomics. More recently, he has been incorporating deep-learning tools to improve behavioral quantification methods in fish. He has led over a dozen competitive research projects as Principal Investigator, supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), and through international collaborations schemes such as FDCT-FCT and FDCT-NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China). He is a founding member and current President of the Macao Association for Scientific Cooperation between China and Portuguese-Speaking Countries (ASCMAC) and serves as USJ’s coordinator of the first Sino-Portugal Joint Laboratory for Marine and Environmental Sciences (JLMES).