Fernanda is a first-year Molecular Anthropology PhD student, from Brazil. She holds a BSc. in Biotechnology and during her undergraduate studies, she researched genetic mutations related to Alzheimer's Disease. After graduating, she worked with COVID-19 molecular diagnosis at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Paraná, in Curitiba (Brazil). Her research interests include molecular anthropology, human evolution, infectious disease, host-pathogen co-evolution, and population genetics.

Fernanda is the first PhD student in the Molecular Anthropology sub-field at UMD Anthropology Department, and together with her advisor, Dr. Miguel Vilar, and colleagues, she is setting up the Evolutionary Anthropology and Genetics Laboratory (EAGL) and the Archaeogenetics Laboratory.

As a dual Master's and PhD student, one of her projects is to study malaria-resistance-related gene variations in African descendant populations in The Bahamas islands.