Luis Cunha took his Biology honours degree in the “Universidade dos Açores” from 2001 to 2005. In February 2005 he went to the “Unidad Multidisciplinaria de Docencia e Investigación” at Sisal, Yucatán (México), to carry out a short term research programme to obtain his First Degree at Universidade dos Acores (Portugal), which he completed successfully in July of the same year. His research project concerned nutritional aspects of caridean larvae in the attempt of obtaining basic biological information for productive purposes (thesis download in portuguese, pdf format). He worked extremely diligently throughout his project and finished his First Degree with an outstanding performance. During his visit to Mexico, Luis attended a 5 month postgraduate course on Experimental Design and Data Analysis, obtaining the best marks of the six students registered in the course.

In September of 2005 he qualified for a MSc. scholarship from European Social Funding in order to attend the master course in Shellfish Biology, Fisheries and Culture of School of Ocean Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, U.K. Under supervision of Dr. Lewis Le Vay he completed his research dissertation on culture and nutrition of soft corals (thesis download in english, pdf format).
In January of 2007 he started to collaborate with PHERG in UNiversity of the Azores and after one year a Phd project entitled “The effects of extreme environments of volcanic origin in organisms: using earthworms as biological models” was created in collaboration with Cardiff University and  LANGEBIO, Mexico.

Luis has since gone on to several post-doctorate and Lecturing roles.