Dr Mello, M.D., Ph.D., is a specialist in pulmonary diseases and a professor of Medicine at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She has been extensively involved in research and has coordinated several clinical and operational studies on TB, and other pulmonary diseases, infectious or chronic. She has been collaborating with Brazilian and international researchers for the last 20 years.

She is now the Scientific Director of the Brazilian Society of Pneumology and Phthisiology, Superintendent of Graduate Courses at UFRJ, and PI at a site in Rio de Janeiro for the RePORT Brazil project.