Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 11, 1956, of a German father whose family had escaped Nazism and from a Brazilian mother who was a skilled nurse and teacher, I was an avid reader from childhood and interested in many subjects, which included literature, languages and science. I was fortunate that my country has a solid public system of higher education, based on competitive access, in which I could pursue medical studies. Due to the high costs of for-profit medical colleges at the time, which would be out of reach for my parents,  it is unlikely that I would obtain an MD degree as I did in 1979 at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, if I depended solely on a private educational system.  This was followed by a master’s degree in Biological Science (Biophysics, 1981) and a PhD degree in Science (Microbiology, major in Immunology, 1990) at the same institution. I was even more fortunate to be able, through the support of my first formal advisor in science, Prof. Marcello A. Barcinski, to pursue a scientific training abroad, initially as a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School, Boston, EUA (1981-1984, Pathology and Medicine), where I was exposed to the challenge of carrying out research at very demanding scientific environments, especially when I worked under Prof. Alain J. Dessein in Prof. John R. David’s group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and first became involved with the study of eosinophils, which remain in the focus of my research to the present. That was also the first opportunity to work in close collaboration with the outstanding research department headed by Prof. K. Frank Austen at the same center, to which I would much later return in a sabbatical leave. Subsequently, I was able to follow Prof. Dessein to France, when he returned    to his native country, as a Research Fellow at the very dynamic and stimulating Centre d'Immunologie INSERM-CNRS de Marseille-Luminy (Marseille-França, 1985-1988). I also had a short, but very stimulating training experience at the  group of Dr. Jan Tavernier, then (1994) at  Roche Research Gent (Gent, Belgium). I have returned to Harvard Medical School in 2005, to spend a year doing research on eosinohils, as Visiting Professor of Medicine, under the guidance of Prof. Bing K. Lam in Prof. Austen’s research group (Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy). I am since 1990 a tenured member of the Department of Immunology, Instituto de Microbiologia Paulo de Góes, at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, as Associate Professor, and held until 2014 an award from  Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa Carlos Chagas Filho, Rio de Janeiro, as  a Rio de Janeiro State Scientist (Cientista do Nosso Estado). I have been for the last 20 years the recipient of Research Productivity Awards from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). I have acted as referee and guest editor for numerous international journals in the field of Pharmacology and Immunology, and have acted as a member of the Editorial Board of World Journal of Experimental Medicine and World Journal of Hematology, both published by Baishindeng. My scientific experience is in the field of experimental immunology, with a focus in immunopathology, and deals with the specific subjects of: hemopoiesis, cytokines, eosinophils, allergic disease and immunomodulation, and the impact of hormones and vitamins on the immune system.