Born in Mountain View, California, USA, on 1985, Melissa Salvador Canhoto came at an early age to Flores Island, Azores, where she lived till the age of eighteen. Melissa Canhoto graduated at Novas Tecnologias da Comunicação, at Universidade de Aveiro. At this moment, she’s just finished her Master on Comunicação Multimédia, Audiovisual branch, at Universidade de Aveiro.

Melissa Canhoto has being developing some works on the area of animation cinema, where she has been already awarded: Best Videoclip for “Somewhere beneath this sky”, at the Cria o Teu Videoclip Festival 2008; and a third place with “The Strange World of Thought”, at the AnimaRun ’08, organized by Restart school. She worked at some projects that participated in such festivals like Made In Deca, Avanca’08 and CINANIMA’08. Melissa Canhoto has also directed an animation for children about environmental education in 2008 called “Vamos ser amigos do ambiente com o Verdusco”.