Ana Teresa Freitas has been named one of this year’s Fulbrighters by the Fulbright Portugal Program.

A researcher in the Information and Decision Support Systems (IDSS) INESC-ID research area, as well as strategic coordinator of the Life and Health Technology thematic line, and Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Professor Freitas is part of a select list of 35 Portuguese Fulbright awardees, and an even narrower group of only three awardees in the “Professors and Postdoctoral Researchers” category.

Professor Freitas will use her three-month stay at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Washington D.C., USA, to perform further research on genomic medicine, developing “new algorithms to improve polygenic risk models, exploring deep learning techniques on datasets with hundreds of thousands of genomes.”

Based on a diplomatic agreement signed between the Portuguese Government and the Government of the United States of America in 1960, the Fulbright Portugal Program aims to promote mutual understanding between these two countries through its mission in the areas of education and science, including its reputed offering of exchange opportunities for professors, researchers and students.