She collaborated with other scientists to investigate the arrival and migration of humans on the American continent during pre-historic times and participated in pharmacogenetic studies.
She completed her bachelor's degree in 1974 and entered the Master's program in Genetics at UFPR in 1975, under the mentorship of Eleidi Chautard Freire-Maia.
Moreover, she is a level I research fellow at the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and holds a Senior Professor position in the Graduated Program of Genetics at the UFPR.
[3] In her early research she investigated the HLA polymorphism in Native South Americans as well as in fogo selvagem, a subtype of pemphigus foliaceus that is endemic in certain geographic regions of Brazil.
Furthermore, indigenous variants of HLA-B were not found in any other populations worldwide, including North American natives, and their origin was attributed to gene conversion rather than point mutation.
[4][5] This discovery resulted in the formulation of the allele turnover hypothesis to explain the natural evolution of the remarkably high HLA diversity observed in human populations.