Joaquim Alves da Silva is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist trained in clinical and basic neuroscience. Initially focused on epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, he shifted to fundamental research after entering the Gulbenkian MD/PhD programme and earned a PhD at Nova Medical School under Rui Costa. His doctoral work used optogenetics and motion tracking to reveal how dopamine neurons drive movement initiation. During a postdoc with Albino Oliveira-Maia, he investigated how food caloric content engages brain circuits and shapes decisions.

He is now a Group Leader at Champalimaud Foundation, in the Neuroscience of Disease Programme, where his lab works on mapping movement disorder symptoms to specific circuit dysfunctions.

Clinically, he sees patients at the Champalimaud Clinical Center in a liasion consultation with the movement disorder clinic. He also teaches at Nova Medical School, coordinating the Neuroscience unit in the medical curriculum and lecturing in Masters and PhD programmes.