I earned my PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and completed my postdoctoral training in Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. After my postdoctoral training, I returned to Brazil to establish my research program at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, where I worked for approximately 10 years. In 2006, I returned to the United States for a 1-year sabbatical at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX and was invited to join the faculty at the Division of Hypothalamic Research. In 2013, I moved my laboratory to the University of Michigan in Ann Abor, MI. I currently hold the position of Professor in the Departments of Molecular & Integrative Physiology and of Obstetrics & Gynecology. I am the Director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Director of the Michigan Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center (MMPC-Live), a National Center funded by the NIDDK. I am a member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences (ACAL) and a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS).

Research in our laboratory is focused on determining the mechanisms by which metabolic imbalance (e.g. obesity and diabetes) disrupts the reproductive neuroendocrine axis. We give special attention to the neural and molecular basis of the adipocyte-derived hormone leptin action in reproductive control. We are also interested in systems neuroscience and the interplay between neuroendocrine axes in development and metabolic dysfunction.