She was born in Campinas (SP) and grew up in the ABC region on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil.

[6] Some of her early ab initio molecular dynamics simulation methods have been implemented in the Quantum ESPRESSO package.

She pioneered ab initio calculations of thermodynamic properties at extreme conditions using the quasi-harmonic approximation, which is essential for their applications in mineral physics and geophysics.

She was the founding director of the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials (2004),[6] a cyberinfrastructure for high-throughput computations of mineral properties at extreme conditions.

She collaborates closely with seismologists, geodynamicists, and geochemists to investigate Earth’s and other planet’s internal structure and dynamics.