Luísa Pereira is a researcher since 2004 and leads the group of Genetic Diversity since 2006. She is a population geneticist, being interested in describing the worldwide diversity in order to infer the evolution of the human species and to evaluate the influence of ancestry in the susceptibility/resistance to complex diseases, particularly cancer and dengue fever. She is internationally recognized for her research on mitochondrial DNA phylogeography, particularly in Europe, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. She led four FCT-funded projects, and co-applied to two European Union-funded (a Marie Curie initial training network – EUROTAST- and an FP7 – DENFREE) projects. She is co-author of over 80 peer-reviewed papers published in international journals and has an h-index of 28.