Daniel Guimarães de Oliveira is the winner of the Nuno Grande Doctoral Scholarship 2022, an initiative of the family of Professor Nuno Grande, the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) and the BIAL Foundation.
“Winning this grant will allow bringing research closer to patients”. That is how the winner, a 3rd-year student of the Doctoral Program in Medical Sciences at the ICBAS and a specialist in internal medicine, Daniel Guimarães de Oliveira, sums up the attribution of this scholarship.
The winning project of the first edition of the Nuno Grande Doctoral Scholarship 2022 intends to extend the study in innovative areas of investigation, such as cell exhaustion and intestinal dysbiosis, to patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), with the main objective of looking for mechanisms to improve the lives of patients.
According to Daniel Guimarães de Oliveira, the importance of this scholarship lies in the possibility it offers of bringing medical research closer to clinical practice. “The great challenge for those who carry out fundamental and translational research is that the boon of patients who accept to participate and the effort of the research team research translates into tangible results to improve care for those suffering from illness. The journey to get there is long, has significant monetary costs and is not guaranteed”. At this stage, the scholarship will allow the student to “consolidate the project and the team, to move towards obtaining answers for our patients”.
Henrique Cyrne Carvalho, a member of the Jury, explained that this scholarship embodies Professor Nuno Grande's vision. “A vision of comprehensive higher education, without defined limits, that would allow opening horizons and tracing new paths. This scholarship represents just that: medical practice, in close collaboration with teaching and research, as the only form of collective benefit”, he states. The other members of the Jury were the vice director of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), Francisco Cruz, the vice director of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (FMUC), Henrique Girão, the director of the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of the University of Algarve (FMCB-UAlg), Isabel Palmeirim, and the president of the School of Medicine of the University of Minho (UM-UM), Jorge Correia Pinto.
The Nuno Grande Doctoral Scholarship 2022 was created on the initiative of the family of Professor Nuno Grande, the ICBAS and the BIAL Foundation, in which Nuno Grande held positions for over 20 years, having been launched within the scope of the celebrations of the Eminent Figure for 2022 of the University of Porto. With the amount of €25,000, it aims to support research work in the areas of Fundamental Sciences, namely those that seek to promote the acquisition of differentiating academic skills for the teaching of Medicine in doctors who collaborate in teaching, and are or intend to develop their studies under the scope of the Doctoral Programme in Medical Sciences taught at the ICBAS.
