Joana Gomes is BSc in Biochemistry by the University of Porto (2005) and MSc in Molecular and Oncology Medicine by the Medical Faculty of the University of Porto. In 2012, she obtained an International joint PhD degree in Biomedicine (University of Porto, Portugal) and Microbiology (University Paris XI, France) with her PhD developed at Institut Pasteur (Paris), IPATIMUP (Porto) and Copenhagen University (Denmark). Since 2007, Joana Gomes has the accreditation of Direcção Geral de Veterinária as a competent person for animal experiments (FELASA Category C).

Joana Gomes is currently a researcher at the Glycobiology in Cancer group, at I3S/Ipatimup, University of Porto, focusing her research in understanding the role of glycosylation in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer therapy resistance, particularly glycoimmunology, towards the identification of novel biomarkers for patients' stratification and targeted cancer therapy development. She is deeply involved in the coordination of clinical samples and its data analysis as well as the experimental procedures using gastrointestinal mice models.

Joana Gomes is co-author of 42 peer-reviewed publications (H-index 22) and has participated in several research projects financed by national and international institutions.