Institute of Education, University of Minho. Master’s degree in Early Intervention-Special Education, from the Institute of Child Studies at the University of Minho. Specialist in Therapy and Rehabilitation-Occupational Therapy. Postgraduate degree in Sensory Integration. Postgraduate degree in Introduction to Statistical Models in Epidemiology, organized by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. In clinical practice, she joined an early intervention team specializing in Developmental Disorders and Autism at the Portuguese Association for Developmental Disorders and Autism in the North (APPDA-Norte) and in private pediatric clinics, where she worked with children with developmental disorders and their families for 15 years.
She began her teaching career in 2010 and is currently a full-time lecturer at ESSLei, but also collaborates with other schools/faculties, namely ESSA, where she has been teaching the Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy-Sensory Integration since 2016.
Principal Investigator of the team applying for the FCT ERA NET NEURON-Call for Joint Transnational Research Projects 2021 with the title “Technological application for sensory regulation of children with ASD in different natural contexts” worth €250,000. The project involved two international partners: Fintan Sheerin, Associate Professor in Intellectual Disability Nursing and Head of the School of Nursing & Midwifery at Trinity College in Dublin, and Josep Monguet, Industrial Engineer, PhD from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Given that this project did not receive funding from the FCT, he decided to start developing it with a group of 4th-year students in collaboration with his colleague Catarina Reis, from the Computer Engineering course at ESTG.
Thus, it was possible to develop an application (“REGUL-A”) for parents of children with autism to regulate their children in daily life activities carried out at home. The research was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health under the title: Regul-A: A Technological Application for Sensory Regulation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Home Context.
This project is still under development.