Inês Paciência

Academy Postdoctoral Researcher at CERH, Faculty of Medicine

Inês Paciência has started her scientific career in 2011 as a research fellow at the Indoor Air Quality laboratory in IDMEC (Institute of Mechanical Engineering) and later INEGI (Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering), where she integrated several national and international projects, whose main objectives were related to the assessment of the impact of exposure to indoor air in different settings on asthma and allergic diseases. In 2015, she was awarded with a PhD grant by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) with the goal of studying the role of environmental determinants on paediatric asthma.

During the last years, the main contributions are related to the dynamic interaction between indoor environment and neighbourhoods on the development of asthma, allergic sensitization, and allergic rhinitis: i) the association between individual exposure and co-exposure to low levels of endocrine disrupting compounds in classrooms with an increased risk of asthma and the presence of respiratory symptoms; ii) the effect of an extreme indoor environment on the composition and diversity of athletes’ microbiome, as a crucial factor in the development and maintenance of appropriate immune function; iii) the effects of grey, green and blues spaces around schools and residences on lung function (underlying the role of autonomic nervous system balance in the interaction between the environment and lung function) and allergic sensitization on children; iv) novel insights on time-specific critical periods in the life course: early-life may be a critical period for exposure to greenness that affects development of allergic rhinitis during late childhood and early adulthood (underlying the bi-directional role of the season in the effects of exposure to greenspaces on allergic rhinitis); and v) the effect of outer and inner layer biodiversity in the development of asthma, wheezing, or allergic sensitization.

Inês is also the current chair of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology working group “One Health”, aiming to contribute to designing and implementing programmes, policies, and research in which multiple stakeholders work together to accomplish better public health outcomes.