The University will welcome on January, 2023 a new postdoctoral researcher with a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postodoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) within the framework of the Horizon Europe European Research and Innovation program. Dr. Erica A. Souza-Silva will join the project “Broadening the coverage of metabolites in faeces through advanced analytical strategies (FaecMet)”, Project ID: 101064457, that will be developed at the CEMBIO Center for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis under the direction of Professor Coral Barbas.

Nowadays, the role of the microbiota in relation to many diseases is increasingly important.  The project, of a highly competitive call, has reived 100/100, and will study in-depth the human faecal metabolites that can provide an insight into metabolic interactions between gut microbiota and the host organism; furthermore, it can be instrumental in not only treating but also intercepting or even preventing diseases. As a proof-of-concept, faeces from patients with anorexia nervosa will be analysed and compared with those obtained from healthy individuals to identify possible biomarkers and/or associations between metabolites. 

In addition, patients with Anorexia Nervosa have nutritional, metabolic, hypothalamic, and endocrine abnormalities, which can cause them to have a modified microbiota. Interestingly, although anorexia nervosa patients often avoid cholesterol-rich foods, hypercholesterolemia is commonly diagnosed in these patients.

Dr. Erica A. Souza-Silva new MSCA-IF at USP-CEU

Dr. Erica A. Souza -Silva is an assistant professor at the Chemistry Department of the Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo - Campus Diadema. She has a PhD in Science from the University of Waterloo (Canada). During her PhD, she developed a new matrix-compatible SPME coating for direct analysis of complex matrices without previous sample treatment. This development granted her the Bruker BioSpin Graduate Scholarship Award in 2013. In 2014, she received an Award by the American Chemical Society (ACS) - AGRO Division - for the development of a complete solventless method to determine multi residue pesticides in fruits and vegetables. From 2015 to 2017 I held a postdoctoral position at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil). In July 2017 I started as Assistant Professor at Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo (UNIFESP, Brazil). Up to date, she has authored 24 original papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, one book chapter, and 7 review articles, in addition to several oral presentations at international conferences. In 2019, she was included in the Stanford University's World`s top 2% scientists list (as per 2019´s citations). She has experience in the areas of green and miniaturized sample preparation techniques, gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry, applied to the fields of food, environmental and bioanalytical analysis, with a focus on metabolomics studies.

The CEMBIO (Center for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis) of the San Pablo CEU University, is a center recognized internationally as one of the leaders in metabolomics (https://cembio.uspceu.es/). It has state-of-art instrumentation and bioinformatics infrastructure.