José Bessa completed his PhD degree in Developmental Biology at ICBAS (University of Porto; 2008), acquiring advanced knowledge in the development of Drosophila and Zebrafish visual systems, under the supervision of Dr Fernando Casares.

As a postdoc, JBessa has joined the lab of Dr JL Gomez-Skarmeta, an expert in zebrafish Functional Genomics. Currently, José Bessa is developing an independent research line on transcriptional cis-regulation and gene function in the zebrafish pancreas.