Andreia J. Amaral is an Assistant Professor of Animal Breeding and Genomics in the Department of Zootechny at the University of Évora. She is also an integrated researcher at MED – Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development (Animal Biosciences group, CHANGE). She graduated in Agronomic Engineering – Animal Production (ISA, University of Lisbon, 2000), holds an MSc in Conservation Biology (University of Lisbon, 2006) and a PhD in Animal Sciences from Wageningen University (2010). Her doctoral work on the pig and chicken genomes contributed to the PorcineSNP60 genotyping panel. Before joining Évora in 2022, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Instituto de Medicina Molecular and BioISI (2011–2017), working on small RNAs and human immunology, and an assistant researcher at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Lisbon (2017–2022).

Her research uses genomics and bioinformatics to understand adaptation, resilience and disease resistance in livestock raised in extensive Mediterranean systems and in sub-Saharan Africa. Her main topics are whole-genome sequencing and selection signatures, host–pathogen adaptation (trypanosomiasis, coccidiosis in Portuguese Merino sheep), epigenetics and gene regulation (prolificacy in Alentejano sows), and antimicrobial resistance within a One Health framework. She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as The EMBO Journal, Genome Biology, Genetics Selection Evolution and Eurosurveillance. She leads national funded projects such as ResisTrypSheep Epi-AfriSuidae and OptigenPig, and has worked in the H2020 consortia BovReg and GEroNIMO. She has represented Portugal in several COST Actions.

She works closely with breeders' associations of Portuguese autochthonous breeds. She helps them introduce genomic tools into their breeding programmes, with genetic diversity assessment, SNP-based pedigree correction,  genetic evaluation and the design of parentage-testing panels. She trains association technicians through courses such as "R for Population Genetics and Animal Breeding" (Erasmus+, 2024).

She teaches genetics and animal breeding in the Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science programmes, supervises PhD and MSc students, and evaluates research proposals for European funding agencies. She developed the open-source tool IsomiR_Window and contributes to the nf-core community.