R. (Raphael) Fagundes Rosa

Raphael Fagundes Rosa was born December 12th, 1991, in Santana-Bahia, Brazil. Raphael completed his high school in Planaltina-Distrito Federal, starting the bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Brasilia (UnB) in 2009. Raphael performed two research projects during his bachelor on the role of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF1α) signaling in respiration of lower eukaryotic organisms. Raphael finished his bachelor’s degree and graduated with honor
in 2015. Raphael moved to the Netherlands in 2015 to complete the Medical and Pharmaceutical Drug Innovation (MDPI) TopMaster program at the
University of Groningen. Raphael performed an internship at the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, supervised by prof. Klaas Nico Faber and Dr. Hermie Harmsen, obtaining evidence of the protective effect of bacterial metabolism of dietary fibers on inflammatory and stress response of intestinal
epithelial cells. Later, Raphael moved to Ireland and performed a second internship at the world-leading group on IBD-hypoxia studies, supervised by prof. Cormac Taylor. There, Raphael studied the impact of hypoxia and oxygen-sensing on inflammation in IBD patient and murine model. Raphael obtained a cum laude master’s degree in 2017.
In 2017, Raphael was granted a PhD fellowship for a proposal he wrote and defended at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen. Raphael started his PhD in a collaborative project between the departments of Gastroenterology & Hepatology (prof. Klaas Nico Faber and prof. Gerard Dijkstra), Medical Microbiology (dr. Hermie Harmsen) and the Conway Institute of the University College Dublin (prof. Cormac Taylor). Raphael studied microenvironmental factors in the intestine that modulate intestinal epithelial HIF1α activation and influence epithelial homeostasis. By the end of his PhD, Raphael had presented his work at numerous national and international conferences and supervised multiple students on lab-related and theoretical theses at bachelor and master student levels. Moreover, Raphael conducted 5 independent research projects, all of which are published or close to
publication with first authorship. Raphael is familiar and confident with a wide array of laboratory skills, including cell culturing techniques (e.g., human-derived organoids and coculture models with anaerobic gut bacteria) and biomolecular and bioinformatics tools, such as CRISPR-Cas9, real-time PCR and RNA sequencing analysis. Raphael is a communicative person that enjoys working in a team, striving for an academic career in which he can learn and teach, providing a service to society.