Originally Portuguese, Silvia Santos left sunny Portugal to study Molecular and Cell Biology in the UK. Silvia did her PhD with Philippe Bastieans at the EMBL in Heidelberg where she worked as a Marie Curie E-Star fellow. She moved to Stanford University for her post-doctoral training with Jim Ferrell where she worked initially as an EMBO fellow, and, later as HFSP fellow. Silvia started her independent research at the MRC-LMS in Imperial College London as an MRC career development fellow (MRC-CDA). She is now senior lecturer at Imperial College London. She joined the Francis Crick Institute in January 2018 as a group leader to establish the Quantitative Cell Biology lab.
Since her PhD Silvia combines experimental and theoretical approaches to understand decision-making during transitions. In this context, her lab studies cell division and cellular differentiation in early human development, using human embryonic stem (hES) cells as a model system.