Dr. Pereira has a BA in Physics from PUC-RJ, a M.S. in Biophysics from UFRJ, and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences/Human Genetics from the Mount Sinai Graduate School/City University of New York. In 1996 she joined the University of São Paulo at the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, where she established the first lines of murine ES cells and first knockout mice (model for Marfan syndrome) in Brazil, and in 2008 the first lines of human ES cells in the country. She is currently Full Professor at USP, heading the National Laboratory for Embryonic Stem Cell Research.