Dr. Taina Rocha de Almeida is the first fellow of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND program at the Institute.

Taina is the winner of the PACIFIC scholarship competition administered by the Polish Academy of Sciences and co-funded by the H2020 Program „Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Co-funding of regional, national and international programs” and the Ministry of Education and Science.

Taina came to the Institute from Brazil, and her research supervisor is Dr. Daniel Żarski from the Department of Gamete and Embryo Biology. The fellow’s research aims to determine to what extent non-genetic inheritance factors affect the adaptability of offspring (from embryo to juvenile stages) to breeding conditions. The study will be conducted on three Polish rainbow trout breeding lines.

The prestigious scholarship of the PACIFIC MSCA COFUND program was awarded to 49 candidates from 60 countries worldwide. The competition was fierce – there were about ten candidates per place. To select the winning proposals, evaluators assessed them in three main categories – excellence, impact, and feasibility. Each project also had to pass an ethical evaluation.

The scholarship was awarded for a period of 24 months.

Welcome to the Institute, and congratulations to the scholarship winner and the research supervisor on this prestigious award.