Inês graduated from Lisbon University in 1992 with a BSc degree (Licenciatura) in Biology. She earned her PhD in human molecular genetics from the University of Cambridge, Department of Pathology.
Following a short period of postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge in the lab of Professor Peter Goodfellow, she joined the newly formed company, Hexagen (a spin-off from the Goodfellow lab). Inês worked in the biotechnology sector for six years where she held various positions and led programmes focussed on the genetics of idiopathic insulin resistance syndromes and type 2 diabetes.
She joined the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2002, where she established the Metabolic Disease Group. Her team uses genetic and genomic approaches to understand the aetiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease, with a focus on type 2 diabetes and obesity. More recently, her group has been using genome-wide association approaches to identify genes with a role in obesity and quantitative traits related to type 2 diabetes. They have been working with many other groups across the world and are active participants in large consortia, such as GIANT and MAGIC, that aim to increase power of these studies by performing meta-analyses across many different studies. Her team also uses re-sequencing approaches to identify rare variants (mutations) that may underlie disease in affected individuals with extreme forms of disease, (for example, severe early onset obesity).
Inês's work on the genetics of metabolic diseases and related traits has to date led to the identification of a number of genes implicated in both monogenic syndromes of insulin resistance and also to the identification of common variants with a role in type 2 diabetes and obesity predisposition. Her work has also identified novel variants associated with a number of additional quantitative traits such as fasting glucose and LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol levels.