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Biotechnology to Build a Brighter Future II
February 28th 2025 9AM (GMT) Online
Food, Health and Environmental Applications
Assistant Professor at CEB-UM
Joana L. Rodrigues holds a Master degree in Biological Engineering (2010) and a PhD in Bioengineering Systems (MIT Portugal Program - 2014) from University of Minho (UM). During her PhD, she was a visiting student for one year at the Prather Lab at MIT, where she worked on curcuminoids heterologous production. She was a Post-Doc from 2015-2018 and a Junior Researcher from 2019-2023. Currently, she is a an Assistant Professor at Biological Engineering Department (DEB) and teaches several Chemical and Biological Engineering courses. Her research interests include the use of different chassis to construct biosynthetic pathways for the production of therapeutic and industrially relevant compounds using synthetic biology tools and sustainable approaches. She was a team member of FoSynBio, Lignozymes, SynBioBacther, ViBrant and B3iS projects. To date, she published 39 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 10 book chapters and participated in several international conferences.
PhD Student at CEB-UM
Joana Sousa is a PhD student in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Minho, Portugal. Her PhD research focuses on metagenomic strategies to design biocatalysts for the production of cello-oligosaccharides, deepening her knowledge in Metagenomics, Biocatalysis, and Prebiotics. She holds a Master’s degree in Biotechnology (2021) and a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry (2018) from the same institution. Her research experience includes the LIGNOZYMES project, where she explored lignocellulosic residues to identify novel enzymes, and the B3iS project, which focused on biosurfactants in saline/hypersaline environments —both utilizing metagenomic approaches.
PhD Student at CEB-UM
Joana Gomes holds a degree in Biochemistry and a Master’s in Molecular Genetics. She is currently a PhD student in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Centre of Biological Engineering (University of Minho). Joana previously worked as a Junior Scientist at SilicoLife under the Horizon2020 ShikiFactory100 project and is now involved in the B3iS Project, funded by FCT. Her research expertise includes DNA extraction, microorganism isolation, metagenomic library construction, genetic
engineering, and data analysis to identify novel biosurfactants from saline environments through metagenomics.
Associate Professor with Habilitation at CEB-UM
Lígia Rodrigues holds a degree in Biological Engineering, a MSc in Biotechnology and a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering. She is an Associate Professor with Aggregation, President of the Pedagogical Council and Vice-President of the School of Engineering. She is also Associate Director of the Center for Biological Engineering at University of Minho and responsible for the research subgroup in Synthetic Biology within the BioSystems group that she coordinates at CEB. Her research focuses on using synthetic biology approaches to design and build new microbial cell factories or improve existing ones for the sustainable production of value-added compounds. She has won several research grants and research contracts with industry. Published more than 200 articles in international peer-reviewed journals (h-index 61). She was involved in the creation of several spin-off companies in the areas of Biotechnology and Life Sciences. She was Director of DEB (2019-2022), Associate Director of DEB (2017-2019), Member of the College of Chemical and Biological Engineering of the Order of Engineers, Northern Region (OERN) (2019-2022) and member of the OERN Disciplinary Council (2022-2025).
Assistant Researcher at CEB-UM
Sara Silvério completed her PhD degree in Biological and Chemical Engineering in 2012 at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto. At present, she is an Assistant Researcher at the Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, working in the production and recovery of relevant industrial biomolecules (e.g. enzymes, pigments, biosurfactants), as well as in the biosynthesis and application of prebiotics. She published 48 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and 8 book chapters (h-index 23). She was the PI/Co-PI in three funded projects ("Lignozymes-Metagenomics approach to unravel the potential of lignocellulosic residues towards the discovery of novel enzymes", "FoSynBio-Synthetic biology approaches to design and construct microbial cell factories to produce FOS”, “BioCello-Cello-oligosaccharides: production using novel biocatalysts and evaluation of their prebiotic potential”), and participated as a team member in several research projects. Currently, she is a team member of the project: "B3iS- Biodiversity and Bioprospecting of Biosurfactants in Saline Environments".
Junior Researcher at CEB-UM
Débora Ferreira holds a PhD in Bioengineering Systems from the University of Minho (MIT Portugal Program, 2021). During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting student at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she worked in the Kalluri Lab on bio-inspired nanovesicles for targeted RNA-based therapeutics. She is currently a Junior Researcher at the Centre of Biological Engineering (CEB-UM) and co-leads the teaching of Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Master’s students. Her current research focuses on developing novel targeted strategies to overcome breast cancer chemoresistance. Over the years, she has contributed to multiple research projects, including “ValBioDerm—Validation of prebiotic biosurfactants produced by lactic acid bacteria for dermatological applications”.
Research Fellow at CEB-UM
João Rainha holds a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Minho. He is currently a research fellow on the Be@t project at the Centre of Biological Engineering, where he applies his expertise in bioprocess engineering. Specializing in synthetic biology, João has advanced expertise in molecular biology techniques, particularly CRISPR-Cas9. His research focuses on constructing heterologous pathways to enable the microbial synthesis of industrially valuable compounds. In addition to his strengths in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, João has extensive experience in scaling up and optimizing bioprocesses for efficient microbial production.