Fátima Carneiro

Fátima Carneiro is a Portuguese pathologist. Since 2001 she has been director of the Pathological Anatomy Service at the University Hospital Centre of São João in Porto. In September 2018 she was voted first in a list of the hundred "Best & Brightest" pathologists in the world, by the magazine, The Pathologist.

After receiving her doctorate Carneiro became a senior investigator at the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP). She is now also a researcher at the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto (Institute of Investigation and Innovation in Health of the University of Porto (i3S). In 2001, she was made a professor of anatomical pathology at the University of Porto Medical Faculty, where she is now a full professor, and, in the same year, was appointed as head of department of anatomical pathology at the University Hospital Centre of São João in Porto. Also in 2001, she became a member of the executive committee of the European Society of Pathology. From 2006 to 2009, Carneiro was vice-president of the Portuguese National Academy of Medicine; in 2007 she was a member of the Scientific Council of the International Gastric Cancer Association and in 2011-2013 she was president of the European Society of Pathology. She coordinated the Portuguese National Network of Tumour Banks in 2008. In 2009 Carneiro was the Portuguese delegate to the EU's Seventh Framework Programme to discuss Theme 1, Health Cooperation. From 2017 she chaired the National Academy of Medicine. She is a member of the European Society of Pathology's Working Group on Digestive Diseases.

Fátima Carneiro was born in 1954 in Sá da Bandeira, now Lubango, in what was then Portuguese Angola. Her parents were teachers and she had a brother. State employees working in Portuguese colonies, such as her parents, spent four years overseas and one year in Portugal before returning to the colony. As a result, she started High School in Portugal and also did her sixth year there. After Angola, her parents were posted to São Tomé. Later, the family returned to Angola, living in the capital, Luanda, where she studied medicine for three years before leaving due to the Angolan War of Independence. She then settled in Porto with her parents, completing a degree in medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto in 1978. Initially, she wanted to be a pediatrician but found that she could not face the suffering of children, so she decided to concentrate on pathology. In 1988 she qualified as a specialist in anatomical pathology and in 1993 received a doctorate in anatomical pathology from the University of Porto.