Ana Santos Almeida

Dr. Ana Santos Almeida is a prominent cancer immunologist and human microbiome researcher. She earned her PhD in Health Sciences from the Institut Pasteur, Paris, in 2012, and completed her postdoctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, USA. In 2016, Dr. Almeida joined Prof. Paul O’Toole’s laboratory at APC Microbiome Ireland, Cork, where she received numerous awards, including the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. Her pioneering work has substantially advanced our understanding of the human gut microbiota’s role in tumour development. From 2021 to 2022, Dr. Almeida directed the R&D team at Tiny Health, a microbiome-focused AI startup. There, she led the development of an innovative gut microbiome test for infants, securing $4.5 million in seed funding. Currently, Dr. Almeida serves as the Principal Investigator of the Microbiome in Health and Disease Translational Lab at iMM-Care in Portugal. Her research is centred on leveraging the microbiome to develop novel biotherapeutics for cancer and identifying gut microbiome biomarkers for early colorectal cancer diagnosis through precision profiling and AI technology. She was awarded the Scientific Employment Stimulus by the National Science Foundation (FCT) in 2022 and selected to lead the iMM-CARE Colorectal Cancer Mission, under Horizon Europe’s Widening-Teaming for Excellence funding scheme. She was recently awarded the Biocodex Microbiota Foundation Grant 2024.