Jaqueline Rocha graduated in Biotechnology and has a Master in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology, both conducted at the University of Aveiro. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Biotechnology with a specialization in Microbiology in the Portuguese Catholic University under the supervision of Dr. Célia Manaia (Portuguese Catholic University), Dr. Isabel Henriques (University of Aveiro), and Dr. Margarita Gomila (Universitat de les Illes Balears).
Her main interests involve the evaluation of antibiotic resistance of bacterial species in aquatic environments, their dissemination, and their possible implications in human health. During her Ph.D., she has been working in the development of novel approaches to unveil wastewater resistome and studying the possible impact of a relevant bacterial species in human health.
She has also been involved in several projects where she investigated the levels of antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater systems, developed investigations on the comparability of quantitative PCR in different laboratories, analyzed clinically-relevant bacterial species genomes in order to search for hints at the genomic level of differentiation between clinical and environmental bacterial species and analyzed environmental samples metagenomes regarding antibiotic resistance genes in order to search for possible biomarkers of antibiotic resistance characteristic from those types of samples.
During her research activities, she has been acquiring experience in culture-dependent methods based on classical microbiology and culture-independent methods based on molecular biology and comparative genomics. She also acquired experience in the use of model organisms such as Galleria mellonella.