Nuno Barbosa Morais

Professor Professor Associado
Principal Investigator

Nuno Barbosa Morais is an Associate Professor and leads the Disease Transcriptomics Laboratory at NOVA Medical School. He is an experienced computational biologist with a long-term interest in the disease-associated perturbations of transcriptional regulation in human cells. He coordinates BIOMICS, a Horizon Europe Twinning project devoted to "Fostering Excellent Research, Training and Innovation in Biomedical Data Science".

Nuno graduated in Technologic Physics Engineering (Instituto Superior Técnico, 2000) and completed a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Lisbon School of Medicine, 2007). Most of his PhD research, involving bioinformatics studies on the complexity and evolution of RNA splicing, took place at Cambridge University and included an internship at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Heidelberg). He then became Research Associate at the Computational Biology Group from the University of Cambridge, CRUK Cambridge Research Institute (2006-2010). He was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship to infer the vertebrate evolution of tissue- and species-specific alternative splicing, in the Blencowe Lab at the University of Toronto (2010-2013).

He received an EMBO Installation and an FCT Investigator Starting Grants to establish a research group at Institute of Molecular Medicine, now GIMM, in Lisbon (2015-2025). He was a Guest Associate Professor at the Lisbon School of Medicine (2020-2025), teaching Bioinformatics to Masters in Biomedical Engineering, Oncobiology and Biomedical Research. Nuno received the University of Lisbon / Caixa Geral de Depósitos 2024 Scientific Award in Biomedical Sciences.

  • Jardim C, Bica M, Reis-Sobreiro M, Teixeira da Mota A, Lopes R, Pinto MF, Sousa NS, Mensurado S, Boekhoff H, Scolaro T, Reugebrink M, Goncalves-Sousa N, Kubo H, Gomes CM, Brito C, Argüello RJ, Leites EP, Morais VA, Silva-Santos B, Barbosa-Morais NL, Serre K. Sustained Macrophage Reprogramming Is Required for CD8+ T cell-Dependent Long-Term Tumor Eradication. Cancer Immunol Res. 2025 Aug 1;13(8):1207-1225. doi: 10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-24-0797.
  • Schneider AL, Martins-Silva R, Kaizeler A, Saraiva-Agostinho N, Barbosa-Morais NL. voyAGEr, a free web interface for the analysis of age-related gene expression alterations in human tissues. Elife. 2024 Mar 28;12:RP88623. doi: 10.7554/eLife.88623.
  • Ascensão-Ferreira M, Martins-Silva R, Saraiva-Agostinho N, Barbosa-Morais NL. betAS: intuitive analysis and visualization of differential alternative splicing using beta distributions. RNA. 2024 Mar 18;30(4):337-353. doi: 10.1261/rna.079764.123.
  • Bordone MC, Barbosa-Morais NL. Unraveling Targetable Systemic and Cell-Type-Specific Molecular Phenotypes of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Brains With Digital Cytometry. Front Neurosci. 2020 Dec 9;14:607215. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.607215.
  • Rathore OS, Silva RD, Ascensão-Ferreira M, Matos R, Carvalho C, Marques B, Tiago MN, Prudêncio P, Andrade RP, Roignant JY, Barbosa-Morais NL, Martinho RG. NineTeen Complex-subunit Salsa is required for efficient splicing of a subset of introns and dorsal-ventral patterning. RNA. 2020 Dec;26(12):1935-1956. doi: 10.1261/rna.077446.120. Epub 2020 Sep 22. Erratum in: RNA. 2024 Jan;30(1):99. doi: 10.1261/rna.079877.123.
  • Munkley J, Li L, Krishnan SRG, Hysenaj G, Scott E, Dalgliesh C, Oo HZ, Maia TM, Cheung K, Ehrmann I, Livermore KE, Zielinska H, Thompson O, Knight B, McCullagh P, McGrath J, Crundwell M, Harries LW, Daugaard M, Cockell S, Barbosa-Morais NL, Oltean S, Elliott DJ. Androgen-regulated transcription of ESRP2 drives alternative splicing patterns in prostate cancer. Elife. 2019 Sep 3;8:e47678. doi: 10.7554/eLife.47678.
  • de Almeida BP, Vieira AF, Paredes J, Bettencourt-Dias M, Barbosa-Morais NL. Pan-cancer association of a centrosome amplification gene expression signature with genomic alterations and clinical outcome. PLoS Comput Biol. 2019 Mar 11;15(3):e1006832. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006832.
  • Saraiva-Agostinho N, Barbosa-Morais NL. psichomics: graphical application for alternative splicing quantification and analysis. Nucleic Acids Res. 2019 Jan 25;47(2):e7. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky888.
  • Barbosa-Morais NL, Irimia M, Pan Q, Xiong HY, Gueroussov S, Lee LJ, Slobodeniuc V, Kutter C, Watt S, Colak R, Kim T, Misquitta-Ali CM, Wilson MD, Kim PM, Odom DT, Frey BJ, Blencowe BJ. The evolutionary landscape of alternative splicing in vertebrate species. Science. 2012 Dec 21;338(6114):1587-93. doi: 10.1126/science.1230612.
  • Wilson MD, Barbosa-Morais NL, Schmidt D, Conboy CM, Vanes L, Tybulewicz VL, Fisher EM, Tavaré S, Odom DT. Species-specific transcription in mice carrying human chromosome 21. Science. 2008 Oct 17;322(5900):434-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1160930.
  • 2026: Oncology Research Grant, Portuguese League Against Cancer - Southern Regional Center / Benfica Foundation
  • 2024: University of Lisbon/Caixa Geral de Depósitos Scientific Award – Biomedical Sciences
  • 2020-2025: FCT Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Individual Support CEECIND/00436/2018
  • 2015-2021: EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) Installation Grant 3057
  • 2015-2019: FCT Investigator Starting Grant IF/00595/2014
  • 2011-2014: Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship PIOF-GA-2010-274037
  • 2010-2012: CIHR (Canadian Institutes for Health Research) Postdoctoral Fellowship MFE-109272