Speakers

 

Opening

 

		Mário Barbosa i3S Director
Mário is Professor Catedrático at Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS), University of Porto. For nearly 30 years biomaterials science and technology is the topic of Marios research. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to biomaterials science, particularly in cell-biomaterial interactions. Mário was one of the founding members of Instituto de Engenharia Biomédica (INEB, http://www.ineb.up.pt), created in June 26, 1989. From 2000 to 2012 he was the Scientific Coordinator of the institute and its President in 2000-2006 and 2010-2012. Presently, he is the Scientific Coordinator of the I3S (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde), of the University of Porto.
		Miguel Castanho Vice president FCT
Born in Santarém in 1967, where he studied Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon. Since 2007, he is a Full Professor of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon and assumed the functions at the board of directors in 2011. He coordinates a research group at Institute of Molecular Medicine, focusing on the develop of new drugs to tackle pain, Alzheimer's disease, some tumors, and virus. It has been awarded several national and international scientific awards such as the Prize José Luís Champalimaud, Prize DOR from the Grünenthal Foundation, and the "Zervas Award" of the European Society of Peptides. He is the principal investigator for two international consortia funded by the European Union, involving academic and industrial partners. He integrates the Publications Committee of FEBS (Federation of the European Biochemical Societies), and has also been a member of the FEBS Education Committee. It has been evaluator of projects in national funding agencies from European countries and the European Commission. In Portugal, he has served as an expert in FCT working groups, Adl (current ANI) and A3ES. It participates regularly in outreach efforts and clarification of scientific material for non-specialized audiences.

 

Finding your place in Academia

		João Cabral Principal Investigator, i3S, Porto
João graduated in Biochemistry from University of Porto, followed by a research assistant position at the University´s Chemistry department. From 1988 to 1993 he conducted his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland after which he did a postdoc with Robert Liddington, first at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard University in Boston and then at the University of Leicester in the UK. From 1997 to 2000 he did a second postdoc with Roderick MacKinnon at Rockefeller University in New York. He then joined the faculty of the MBB department at Yale University as Assistant professor. In 2007 he was promoted to Associate professor. In 2008 he moved to the IBMC as a Principal Investigator.
		Filipe Antunes Invited Assistant Professor, FCTUC, Coimbra
Filipe Antunes was born in Coimbra, and graduated in Industrial Chemistry in 2001 with the best student award. He then focused on Colloid Chemistry and finished his PhD degree in this area at the University of Coimbra (UC) and University of Lund in Sweden, five years later. He developed his Postdoctoral work at Procter & Gamble in the US and at BASF in Germany. During the last 5 years, he has been project leader of more than 20 academic and industrial projects in UC, with external grants of about 2 million euro. He currently coordinates COLLING research group (Colloids and Innovative Nanomaterials Group) at UC and promotes cooperative industry-academia networks, both national and international. He is a member of the advisor team of UC for the New European Support Programme for Research and Development, and delegate of the European Union's Strategy Committee for Research. He published ca. 50 scientific publications and patents, and gave ca. 150 communications at universities and companies, in the context of his areas of expertise that include Physical Chemistry of Surfactants and Polymers, Colloids, detergency, Rheological control, stabilization formulations and coatings. It is considered one of the most active researchers at UC in the knowledge transfer to the society.
		Elizabeth Silva Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Founding Director of the Motivating INformed Decisions (MIND) Program, University of California, San Francisco
Elizabeth Silva was the founding director of the Motivating INformed Decisions (MIND) program at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and a former Senior Editor at PLOS ONE. She holds a PhD in Developmental Biology from University College London, and was a postdoc at UCSF in the Biochemistry department. Her current research interests focus on issues in science policy, including reproducibility in research, ethical conduct in research and publishing, career exploration and professional development for PhDs, and the roles of PhD trainees in the biomedical workforce and in academia. She is currently Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at UCSF.

Finding your place in the private sector

		Rita Mateus Seidl Director of External Innovation, pRED Roche Innovation Center, Penzberg
Rita is Director of External Innovation for Oncology Discovery at Roche Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development, Roche Innovation Center Munich. In her role she provides scientific evaluation of external opportunities for Oncology, leading the initial evaluations and interacting with cross functional lines to identify the most promising opportunities to pursue. She joined Roche as a Post-Doc in 2009 in the Oncology Discovery department and became a group leader in the same department in 2012, during which time she was pre-clinical leader of several portfolio projects, work which has granted a nomination for the Roche High Talent Pool. Rita holds a PhD in Human Biology by the Medical Faculty of the University of Porto and graduated in Biology at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon in 2002. Since early days she felt compelled to study cancer, reason why she joined the Portuguese Institute for Oncology in Lisbon for the degree’s final internship, and afterwards joined the team of Prof. Raquel Seruca at IPATIMUP in 2002. In 2004 Rita was awarded a 1-year Marie Curie fellowship, followed by a PhD fellowship from the Portuguese FCT to develop her PhD in collaboration between the University of Porto and the Technical University of Munich.
		Tiago Carvalho CEO, LabOrders, Porto
Tiago is a 36-year-old Biochemist, holding a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience, and has conducted scientific research in several labs in Portugal, Germany, Sweden and the United States. Currently he is the CEO of LabOrders, a start-up company that develops software for scientific research labs. As a student of the Gulbenkian Ph.D. Program in Biomedicine he spent 5 years at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) trying to understand how the brain works, and in 2009 he was distinguished with the “Eva Kavan Prize for Excellence in Research on the Brain”. He was also the Vice-President of the Portuguese American Postgraduate Society (PAPS). Tiago decided to return from the United States to give his contribute back to Portugal and founded LabOrders, an online platform that manages requests of laboratory products, which brings together Suppliers and Researchers to a single marketplace. By dramatically reducing the time spent in ordering a laboratory product/reagent, LabOrders immediately increases the productivity of the Researcher, allowing him/her to focus on the experiments. Tiago is a fan of Portugal, and invests infinite time convincing his friends to better appreciate this country, highlight the existing opportunities.
		Ana Patrícia Sousa Project Developer, Innovayt, Braga
Patrícia assists clients to obtain funding for their research and technological development projects. Patrícia has a Master and PhD in Physiology and Physiopathology from Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Institute Pasteur, Paris. She has more than 7 years of experience in research, where she was involved in R&D projects in the field transcription mechanism regulation and in cell fate decisions. Her scientific work has been published in a number of scientific papers in peer reviewed journals such Nature Immunology and Journal of Immunology, and presented in international conferences. Patrícia has recently finished the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management Program at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics and during the last 4 years she has been involved in the development of projects and preparation of proposals in the Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals domains.

Finding your own place

		Pedro Russo International Project Manager Universe Awareness Programme, Leiden (Video call)
Pedro is committed to using astronomy as an educational tool. Pedro is Chair of the Schools and Children Task Force of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Astronomy for Development programme and President of Commission Communicating Astronomy with the Public of the IAU. Until 2010 he was the global coordinator for the largest network ever in Science Outreach, the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Pedro coordinated the planning, implementation, execution and evaluation of the global IYA2009 activities, projects and events. He was also responsible for the communication between the thousands of stakeholders of the project, including projects and national chairs, astronomy community, media and society with respect to all global IYA2009 issues. Pedro obtained his PhD in Astronomy Communication from Leiden University, the Netherlands, his University degree in applied mathematics/physics/astronomy and his Master’s Degree in geophysics from the University of Porto, Portugal. Before assuming his current position, he spent one year and half working with data from the Venus Monitoring Camera onboard ESA’s Venus Express. In the meanwhile, he has been working with different international organisations, like Europlanet (European Planetology Network), International Astronomical Union Commission 55: Communicating Astronomy with the Public, European Geophysical Union - Earth and Space Science Informatics Division and International Astronautical Federation -Space and Society Committee. From 2007 to 2011 Pedro was outreach scientist of the educational and public outreach department of the European Southern Observatory. Pedro is also the founder editor-in-chief and editorial board of the scientific journal Communicating Astronomy with the Public Journal. Pedro received several awards for his work including Scientix Award for Best Resources in Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering and Portuguese National Multimedia Award for his TV series production: 1 Minute of Astronomy.
		Cláudio Nunes-Alves Senior Editor, Nature Microbiology, London
Cláudio studied Biochemistry at the University of Porto, Portugal, before earning his Ph.D. in Life and Health Sciences from the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. During his Ph.D., he shared his time between Portugal and the United States, in the laboratories of Margarida Correia-Neves (at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute, Braga, Portugal), Sam Behar (then at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA) and Christophe Benoist (at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA), studying multiple aspects of immunity to tuberculosis. After a brief postdoctoral position with Sam Behar (now at UMass Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA), Cláudio joined the Nature Reviews Microbiology team as an Associate Editor in April 2014, and after a successful period as locum Chief Editor in 2015, he became a Senior Editor. In March 2016, Cláudio moved to Nature Microbiology, joining the team as a locum Senior Editor. Cláudio loves all microbiology-related things, from bacteria and archaea to viruses, fungi and parasites, but doesn’t hide that he also likes immunology quite a bit.
		Tiago Barros Research and Analytics Manager F1000, London
Tiago Barros is the Research and Analytics Manager for the science publisher F1000. He received his Licenciatura degree in Biochemistry in 2004 from the University of Porto. His passion for structural biology and protein structures lead him to complete two internships in X-ray crystallography labs: one in with Janos Hajdu in Uppsala, Sweden and another with Ana Margarida Damas at IBMC in Porto. Following this, he obtained his doctoral degree in 2009 from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany where he worked with Werner Kühlbrandt on the structure and function of plant light-harvesting complexes. He then moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where he joined the lab of John Kuriyan. His work in the Kuriyan Lab, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as a Research Specialist, focused on the structure of bacterial replicative DNA polymerases and protein kinases that carry out cellular signal transduction. Since 2010, he has also been a Freelance Illustrator for Garland Science. His illustration work appears in a number of leading textbooks in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, including Bruce Albert’s Molecular Biology of the Cell.
		Maria João Leão Executive Director, Maratona da Saúde, Lisbon
Maria João Leão is graduated in Biology from Coimbra University, was an Erasmus Student at Utrecht University and did an MSc in Biotechnology offered by De Montfort University (Leicester). The research project was done in German Cancer Institute (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. Through the Gulbenkian PhD program in Biology and Medicine (PGDBM), she holds a PhD in Cancer Research from Imperial College, University of London. Under the scope of her research postdoctoral work at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre in London, she has participated in science communication and fundraising activities. After returning to Portugal, in 2007, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Science Communication and Outreach team and Head of Fundraising at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). She has been involved in several science communication and fundraising initiatives in Portugal such as the partnership established between IGC and Everything is New, the promoter of the music festival Optimus Alive Oeiras and with Vista Alegre. She is now Executive Director of Maratona da Saúde, a non-profit association that aims to raise awareness and funds for biomedical research.

Improve Yourself

		Luís Martins Simões Career and Motivational Coach, MS-leadership, Lisbon
Luís Martins Simões has a degree in Economics (1981) and a Degree in Business Administration (1983), both from the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium. Since 1997, he has been travelling the world conducting training and coaching sessions in leadership, communication, motivation and emotional intelligence for multinational companies as well as local businesses. He is widely recognized as an expert in intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. He believes that everything we do should be done smoothly, effortlessly, but with hard work and cheerfulness. Nevertheless lasting happiness is not possible without intuition. Luís is a dynamic and enthusiastic person with a non-conformist look over life and society. For him, the evolution of humanity depends on the ability to discover creative power rather than simple repetition. Many things on our planet work properly, but many others do not work at all. Those that work nicely are invariably the result of an innovative and creative paradigm because when we feed the repetition, problems arise. More info: https://www.luismartinssimoes.com http://www.ms-leadership.com/
		Elizabeth Silva Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Founding Director of the Motivating INformed Decisions (MIND) Program, University of California, San Francisco
		Ana Mingorance Scientific Director of the Dravet Syndrome Foundation and Science Career Forum Advisor
Dr. Ana Mingorance is the Scientific Director of the Dravet Syndrome Foundation in Spain, a non-profit patient organization focused on running and promoting research on Dravet syndrome and related neurological rare diseases. In this role, Ana is responsible for long-term research strategy and for building and managing a portfolio of research collaborations ranging from diagnostics to clinical research. She is also an independent consultant to universities, companies and patient organizations in drug discovery, partnering and strategy in the areas of neuroscience and rare diseases through her company Dracaena Consulting. Before establishing her company, Ana was a lab head and discovery project leader at the global biopharmaceutical company UCB Pharma. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Barcelona in Spain and completed and EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Ana is also an Advisor at the Science Career Forum from the journal Science.
		Albino Oliveira Head of Employability Office, University of Porto, Porto
The Employability Office aims to help students and alumni leverage their knowledge and skills to make the best connections for career success. Some of the services provided include: Job Fairs (presencial in Porto and Vigo - 1st virtual job fair); Coaching; Resume Reviewing; Workshops; Networking Opportunities. From 1990 until 2014 he was responsible for the student’s outgoing mobility unit of the International Office of the Universidade do Porto. In this position he was responsible for the organization and management of the student’s outgoing mobility (out of U. Porto) under agreements, European Education and Training programmes, Erasmus and Leonardo da Vinci.
		Mariana Casanova Students and Employability Office, Catholic University, Porto
Psychologist since 2003, works with Higher Education students since 2005 at the Students and Employability Office of the Catholic University of Portugal. This office seeks to promote students’ and graduates’ personal and social well-being, as well as professional development, while improving academic relationships with the labour market. In this scope, we develop employability workshops, career counselling, job fairs and the promotion of a career portal with job opportunities. Mariana works with students and professionals in terms of personal and professional development, career development and employability enhancement, while interacting with companies, universities and the labour market in general. At Catholic University of Portugal has focused on employability matters of students and graduates of the Biotechnological area. PhD candidate and MSc in Psychology at University of Porto has been researching topics related to experiences of psychological uncertainty in its relationship with work and the labour market, with social and cultural constraints in contemporary societies and with personal well-being and psychological development.