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Food, Health and Environmental Applications
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Associate Professor with Habilitation at CEB-UM
Lígia Rodrigues is an Associate Professor with Habilitation, Head of the Dep. of Biological Engineering and Associate Director of CEB research unit at UMinho. She is responsible for the Synthetic Biology group within the BioSystems research group at CEB. Her research focuses on the use of synthetic biology approaches to design and construct new microbial cell factories towards the sustainable production of added value compounds (e.g. prebiotics, biosurfactants, bulk chemicals). She is the recipient of several research grants and contract research projects. She has published more than 150 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 35 book chapters and 10 papers in international conferences (h-index 44). She has been involved in the launching of several spin-off companies in the Biotech and Life Sciences fields. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the BBI-JU and Vice-Director of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Section of Ordem dos Engenheiros, North Region.
Faculty Researcher 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. Currently, she is a Faculty Researcher at Centre of Biological Engineering-UM and an Invited Assistant Professor at Biological Engineering Department (DEB) and teaches courses at the Integrated Master in Biological Engineering and Master in Biotechnology. 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 is a team member of FoSynBio, Lignozymes, ViBrant and B3iS projects. To date, she published 14 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 6 book chapters and participated in several international conferences.
Faculty Researcher at CEB-UM
Adelaide Correia Braga holds a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of Minho (UM) in 2014, under the scope of biotechnological production of flavors. Participated in the FP7 EU-BachBerry project (2015-2016) and part of her activity is dedicated to the development of a production process for polyphenols production and its subsequently upscale to pilot plant with integration of downstream processing for product purification. Currently, she is Junior Researcher at CEB under the scope of the FoSynbio project, that aims to use synthetic biology approaches to genetically modify Z. mobilis to produce prebiotics from agro-industrial by-products and further optimize the bioprocess. Her current research interests are the development of sustainable and novel bioprocesses, the use of molecular and synthetic biology tools to develop microbial cell factories able to produce added-value compounds, scaling-up bioprocesses, bioprocesses sustainability under the circular economy concept and well aligned with the EU Green Deal and the research translation into industrial settings and economic viability of these processes.
Faculty 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 a Junior Researcher at the Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, working in the identification, production and recovery of relevant enzymes to the industry, as well as in the synthesis of prebiotics from industrial residues and their further characterization and application in food matrices. She is also PI of the project "LIGNOZYMES-Metagenomics approach to unravel the potential of lignocellulosic residues towards the discovery of novel enzymes", Co-PI of the project "FoSynBio-Synthetic biology approaches to design and construct microbial cell factories to produce FOS” and team member of the project "B3iS- Biodiversity and Bioprospecting of Biosurfactants in Saline Environments".
Faculty Researcher at CEB-UM
Cláudia Amorim, PhD in Bioengineering, is currently an invited Professor at University of Minho (UM, Portugal), a junior researcher at Centre of Biological Engineering (CEB-UM) under the scope of the CEEC-FCT program, a collaborator at the Portugal’s Biotech. Industry Organization, and team member of the B3iS and LIGNOZYMES projects. She was also a Postdoc at CEB-UM from FCT under the scope of the FOSYNBIO project (2019-21).
Her research is focused on from-waste-to-market ideas, particularly in exploring agro-residues to create value-added products and incorporate them in commercial food products. Her PhD work was developed at UM and MIT (Cambridge, USA), under the MIT-Portugal doctoral program (2015-19). She developed for the first time a competitive one-step bioprocess for the production of xylooligosaccharides from agro-residues. During her PhD, she acquired competences in tech transfer and she started to develop a food application containing commercial prebiotics, after being granted with financial support from NEWFOOD, in which she worked as team leader (2018-19), stablishing a work collaboration with USC (Spain).
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Faculty Researcher at CEB-UM
Andréia O. Santos completed her PhD degree in Agricultural Microbiology in the field of Applied Fermentative Processes and Agroindustry in 2016 at the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA), Brazil. Currently, she is a Faculty Researcher at Centre of Biological Engineering (CEB) at University of Minho under the scope of the project Lignozymes that is focused in the application of metagenomics approaches to unravel the potential of lignocellulosic residues towards the discovery of novel enzymes. Her academic background and research interest are in the Research and Development area, mainly involving the biotechnological application of microorganisms in fermentative and agro-industrial processes besides the application of metagenomics methodologies to explore novel biocatalysts.
