Team

Vitor Vasconcelos

Project Coordinator

Vitor Vasconcelos (PhD) is a full professor at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences of Porto University, and a Senior Researcher at CIIMAR being the head of the Research Team on Blue Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology. He has more than 25 years of experience in research on natural toxins, emerging marine toxins, and marine biotechnology, focus on unraveling new bioactive molecules extracted from marine microorganisms with pharmacological, allelopathic, and antifouling applications. He supervised more than 65 MSC and 25 PhD students and he is responsible for the LEGE culture collection comprising more than 100 strains of cyanobacteria and microalgae. He is the director of the PhD course on Marine Biotechnology and Aquaculture of the Porto and Minho Universities. Member of the scientific committee of the PhD courses on Biology, Marine and Environmental Sciences of Porto University and Biology of Aveiro University. Since 2010 he is a member of the European Marine Board, having been a member of the EMB Communication Panel from 2010-2012. Since January 2013 he is the president of the board of CIIMAR and since March 2019 chief executive officer of BLUEBIO ALLIANCE, the Portuguese Network of Marine Bioresources and Blue Biotechnology.

Pedro Leão

ERA Chair Holder

A Porto native, Pedro has a background in Biochemistry (BSc, U. Porto) and began to study cyanobacteria during his MSc studies at the same University. He then focused on the chemical ecology of cyanobacteria and obtained his PhD degree in 2010. He undertook post-doctoral training in natural products chemistry and biosynthesis at CIIMAR, Scripps Oceanography and Harvard University. In 2017, Pedro was the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant and established his own laboratory at CIIMAR. His research interests lie at the intersection of microbiology, biochemistry and chemistry, namely the discovery of new natural products and new enzymes from cyanobacteria.

Maria Lígia Sousa

Science and Technology Manager

Lígia has a scientific background in discovering new compounds of cyanobacterial origin and deciphering their mechanism of action using microtumor models.
She has joined the CNP team under the BlueBio4Future ERA Chair grant. She will work on project management, reporting and compliance, funding identification, and dissemination activities.
BSc in Applied Biology (University of Minho), MSc in Marine Sciences, and PhD in Biology (University of Porto).

Ana Vieira

PhD researcher in Microbiology | Synthetic Biology

Ana Vieira joined the BlueBio4Future project as a junior researcher, focusing on the discovery and biosynthesis of natural products. She earned her PhD in Medical Microbiology from Kingston University, London, in 2018. Ana’s research interests lie in discovering new compounds with activity against protozoan amoebae.

BSc and MSc in Microbiology (Superior School of Biotechnology, Catholic University, Porto) and PhD in Medical Microbiology (Kingston University, London)

Konrad Viehrig

PhD researcher in Natural Products discovery and Biosynthesis

Konrad Viehrig joined the BlueBio4Future project as a junior researcher for natural products discovery and biosynthesis studies. Konrad completed his PhD in the lab of Prof. Rolf Müller in Germany and has since gained post-doctoral experience in synthetic biology and natural product pathways in the labs of Prof. Jay Keasling in Denmark and Prof. Ben Shen in the United States. Throughout his career, he has worked with different microorganisms (Bakers Yeast, Myxobacteria, Actinomycetes) for natural product discovery, enzymology and pathway engineering.

BSc in Human and Molecular Biology (Saarland University, Germany) and PhD in Natural Sciences (Saarland University, Germany)

Leandro Pereira

PhD researcher in Bioinformatics

Leandro Mattos Pereira joined the BlueBio4Future project as a junior bioinformatics researcher. Leandro received his PhD in Functional Genomics, Evolution, and Phylogenomics. He has worked as a postdoctoral researcher on genomic analysis, functional and comparative genomics annotation of bacteria and eukaryotes, identification of non-homologous isofunctional enzymes, metabolic pathway reconstruction, and systems biology. He has also worked with next-generation sequencing data from genomes, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabarcoding.

BSc in Biological Sciences (University of Northern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), MSc in Biosciences and Biotechnology (University of Northern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and PhD in Computational Biology and Systems (Oswaldo Cruz Institute-Fiocruz, Brazil)

Mariane Fagundes

PhD researcher in Bioprocess and Metabolic Engineering

Mariane Fagundes joined the BlueBio4Future action team as Junior researcher in Bioprocesses and Metabolic Engineering. Mariane’s main areas of expertise are the metabolic characterization of microalgal biomass, microalgal extracts the use of green technologies to produce microalgar extracts, in-silico and in vitro effects evaluation, sterols bioactivity, bioremediation, biorefinery, and metabolomics.

PhD and MSc in Food and Science Technology (Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil), BSc in Food Technology (Federal University of Santa Maria)

Paulo Oliveira

PhD researcher in Syntehtic Biology and Metabolic Engineering

Paulo Oliveira moved from the Bioengineering and Synthetic Microbiology group at IBMC/i3S, U.Porto to Cyanobacterial Natural Products group, in CIIMAR-UP, becoming a junior researcher under the BlueBio4Future project, and Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences, U.Porto. He has dedicated his scientific career to the study of cyanobacteria. Lately, he has focused on secretions mechanisms, particularly in the form of extracellular vesicles, and has participated in Synthetic biology initiatives.

BSc in Biology (University of Porto) and PhD in Biological Sciences from (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Eunice Ferreira

Research Technician in Microbial Genetics and Molecular Biology

Eunice has a scientific background in developing synthetic biology tools and optimizing cyanobacterial chassis for the production of added-value compounds. Eunice finished her PhD and has joined the CNP team under the BlueBio4Future ERA Chair grant as a research technician in microbial genetics and molecular biology.

BSc in Biology, MSc in Cell and Molecular Biology, and PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology Applied to Health Sciences (University of Porto).

Marco Preto

Research Technician in Natural Products Chemistry

Marco Preto is presently interested in the isolation and structural elucidation of new bioactive substances.

BSc Chemistry in 2000 (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto); PhD in Chemistry in 2009 (University of do Minho).

Mariana Moutinho

Research Technician in Photobioreactors Biomass Production

Mariana Moutinho expertise focus on microorganisms cultivation in photobioreactors under a range of light and temperature settings, with the objective of evaluating the effects of culture conditions on various biochemical parameters, such as protein, carbohydrate, pigment and lipid content.

BSc in Biology and MSc in Applications in Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology (University of Porto)

Sara Freitas

Research Technician in Natural Products Chemistry

Sara Freitas is finishing PhD studies focused on the discovery of new compounds from phylogenetically-diverse cyanobacteria that can demonstrate pharmacological potential and/or have unique biosynthetic pathways. Sara join BlueBio4Future project as a research technician in microbial biomass/bioprocess towards the optimization of metabolites production.

BSc in Biology and MSc in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (University of Porto)

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 952374.

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