I received my BSc degree in Chemistry in 1999 at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) in Brazil, after completing undergraduate research at the laboratory of Dr. Joachim Demnitz (current Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Poseidon Pharmaceuticals, Denmark), in the area of medicinal chemistry. In 2000, I worked at Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland, on the development of greener synthetic routes for the production of bioactive chiral molecules. In 2005, I received my PhD degree in Chemical Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, under supervision of Prof. Herbert Waldmann, where my research interests were focused on peptide and protein chemistry and novel bioconjugation techniques. Since 2005, I have been a research officer at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, where my research focus has been on the discovery of novel bioactive peptides and the development of peptide drugs from venoms and other sources.