Philippe Vieira Alves
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Philippe Vieira Alves (updated on July 29, 2024)
I am originally from Brazil, where I completed a teaching degree in Biology at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), and an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Animal Biology at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). During my graduate studies, I realized several short and long-term research stays at the Institute of Parasitology of the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice (under the guidance of Dr. Tomáš Scholz), and at the Parasitic Platyhelminthes Collection of the Natural History Museum, Geneva (under the guidance of Dr. Alain de Chambrier).
Following my Ph.D., I took a short-term position as a Researcher and Development Worker in Tomáš’lab, and later I got a postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). In my scientific career (10+ years), I have dedicated myself to the taxonomy and systematics of parasitic helminths from wild vertebrates in the Neotropical region. Combining morphological and molecular approaches, I have addressed different taxonomic questions at species or higher-classification levels, mostly related to proteocephalidean tapeworms (cestodes) from freshwater fish.
At present, I am conducting another postdoc research project at the São Paulo State University (UNESP, Botucatu), focused on the diversity and evolution of proteocephalids from Brazil. Under the scope of this project, I am keen to join the Phyloinformatics Lab at UNC Charlotte’s CIPHER research center to deepen my knowledge of high-throughput sequencing technologies. Applying high-throughput techniques in my studies will not only broaden my professional portfolio but also help answer long-standing questions in the evolutionary history of proteocephalidean tapeworms.
São Paulo Research Foundations’ Research Intership Abroad Award
Dr. Alves received a Research Intership Abroad (BEPE) Award from the São Paulo Research Foundations (FAPESP; Proc. No. Process No.2023/00714-5). This award funds Sr. Alves’ reserach in collaboration with the Phyloinformatics Lab from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. The funded reserach project is entitled “Mitogenome organization and diversity of proteocephalid tapeworms (Cestoda) unveiled by genome skimming.”
This project will optimize molecular biology and bioinformatics protocols to reveal the mitogenome organization and sequence diversity of fish proteocephalids. Moreover, modern and comprehensive evolutionary analyses leveraging publicly available molecular sequences and data generated de novo will answer long-standing questions in proteocephalids evolution. Furthermore, this project will generate a methodological and conceptual framework to bridge the gap between the taxonomy of parasitic flatworms. In that way, the methodology developed as a result of this proposal will add to the pool of resource-efficient molecular analyses that promise to make museum biorepositories more readily available to biomedical research.