Dr Cunha holds a BSc in biochemistry, PhD in pharmacology and Agregacao in medicine. He is currently a professor at the faculty of medicine and director of the Department of Neuropharmacology of the Center for Neurosciences of the University of Coimbra, where he leads the research group ‘Purines at CNC’ consisting of four senior researchers, five post-docs, eight PhD students and one technician. The group focuses on the exploitation of the purinergic system to develop novel strategies to manage brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, stress and depression, attention deficits, diabetic neuropathies and sepsis-associated neuroinflammation. Dr. Cunha has published over 130 papers with an h factor of 34. He has supervised 11 post-docs and 24 PhD students and is currently a member of Steering Committee of the European Neuroscience Campus (ENC, first European PhD program in neurosciences) and European Neuroscience Institute Network (ENI-Net).