Rui F. Oliveira

Rui F. Oliveira is Professor and Chair of Biology and Neurosciences at ISPA, Principal Investigator at the Gulbenkian Science Institute and Adjunct Faculty of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program. His key qualifications are in the field of Animal Behaviour and Cognition, Neurobiology and Genomics. He is an elected member of EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) and has served as President of the Society for Social Neuroscience (2016-2021). He was Rector of ISPA (2010-2020), where he is currently the Director of the master’s degree in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience and of the PhD Program in Behavioural Biology. He has published over 200 research papers in international peer-reviewed journals and edited 2 books. His research is focused on the understanding of the mechanisms underlying social behavior and their evolution using an integrative approach: from genes, to neural circuits, to behavior. He aims to understand how organisms became social, that is how the cognitive, neural, and genetic mechanisms underlying sociality have evolved, and how the social environment can shape brain and behavior having a major impact in organismal function and disease. He has also been deeply involved in Science Communication and in developing an interface between Art and Science. He was the Curator of a major Science Exhibition (“Brain: Wider than the Sky”, Gulbenkian Foundation, March-June 2019), and he has written and presented the Gulbenkian Neuroscience Materclass.