(i3s)
The i3S team brings strong expertise in computational biology, bioinformatics, and the analysis of complex genomic datasets. We have extensive experience developing analytical pipelines, creating custom computational tools, and interpreting high‑dimensional biological data across diverse research contexts.
Within the CapCell project, the i3S team will focus on analysing single‑cell genomic datasets, designing and implementing tools to support this analysis, and developing clear guidelines to ensure rigorous and meaningful interpretation of the results, particularly tailored to forensic applications.
Catarina Xavier has completed her BSc Biology degree at the University of Porto (Portugal) and Umeå Univer-sity (Sweden) in 2010 and pursued her MSc on Forensic Genetics at the same Portuguese Universi-ty/IPATIMUP in 2012. Afterwards she undertook her PhD studies in Medical Sciences (Genetics and Ge-nomics program) at the Medical University of Innsbruck under the supervision of Prof. Walther Parson. From 2017 to 2021 she has worked as a full-time postdoc researcher at the Institute of Legal Medicine Innsbruck, taking part of the European Horizon 2020 project VISAGE (VISible Attributes through GEnomics). In 2022 she joined i3S (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde) as a postdoc. Currently, her research focuses on the development of computational models and bioinformatic applications in forensics and clinical genetics. In 2025, she joined the two most relevant consortia in forensic genetics, ForMAT and CapCell (Horizon Europe projects) as i3S institutional PI. Catarina Xavier has 43 peer-reviewed publications and a h-index of 22 (ac-cording to Scopus ID). She has recently integrated the "World’s Top 2% Scientists list" by the University of Stanford.
Nádia Pinto holds three academic degrees in Mathematics awarded by the University of Porto: BSc in Math-ematics - Education branch (2003), MSc in Mathematical Engineering (2006), and PhD in Applied Mathemat-ics (2012). She is an Associate Researcher at i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto. Her research has been focused in the development of mathematical models and software for a wide range of research problems. Her expertise and knowledge have been applied to problems ranging from kinship assessment and species identification, mutation modeling, or mixtures analyses, to uni- and multimodal approaches under the scope of cancer or neurological diseases. She is author of more than 70 publications in international peer reviewed journals, books, book chapters, and proceedings, and has been supervisor of dozens of students (PhD, MSc, and BSc), fellows (PhD, MSc, and BSc), and researchers (PhD).
