Joao Mello-Vieira obtained his Bachelor's (2010) and Master’s (2012) Degrees in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Afterward, he moved to the Institute of Molecular Medicine João Lobo Antunes, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, Portugal.  There, he worked on Plasmodium parasites, the causative agents of the tropical disease malaria, under the supervision of Prof. Maria Manuel Mota and Dr. Vanessa Zuzarte-Luís. His Ph.D. focused on the Plasmodium protein Exported Protein 2 (EXP2), and he showed that EXP2 is important for the parasites to infect hepatocytes, during the liver stage of malaria infection. He joined the Dikic group in May 2022, as a post-doctoral researcher. His focus in on targeting the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii, of the leading causes of hospital infections.