Filipe Pinto (born 1981) has a first degree (2003) and an MSc (2009) in Biochemistry, and a PhD in Biology in the field of Synthetic Biology (2013, Approved with Distinction), all from the University of Porto (UP) in Portugal. He did an Erasmus internship at the Biological Research Centre (University of Szeged, HU) in his final college year and since then he has been involved in research activities in the fields of molecular microbiology and protein science. He studied phage-triggered bacterial autolysis (2004, University of Lisbon, PT), integrated a group of molecular structure of proteins (2005, IBMC/UP, PT) and from 2006 to 2015 he focused his research in the molecular biology of cyanobacteria (IBMC/UP, PT). During this period, he integrated the research team led by Paula Tamagnini and participated in two Synthetic Biology European projects: the pioneer FP6 EU-project “BioModularH2” as a PhD student, and the FP7 EU-project “CyanoFactory” as a Postdoc. From 2016 to 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh (UoE, UK), accumulating lab manager functions. During this period, his research interests included the design and engineering of new scalable biological circuits by developing and combining libraries of orthogonal split inteins (“protein ligases”), optimized extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigma factors and orthogonal transcription repressors. Over the years, he was also involved in the preparation of proposals of funded R&D projects and, afterwards, he was part of the research team performing the work; he contributed to the creation of the ideas as well as in writing the proposals.

Currently, F Pinto is an Assistant Researcher (CEEC – Individual Call, 3rd Edition) at the Bioengineering & Synthetic Microbiology group (i3S/UP, PT), developing his research in the field of cyanobacterial Synthetic Biology, and team member on the recently granted European project “PhotoSynH2” (Project: 101070948 - HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01).

With 20 years of research experience, F Pinto co-authored his first paper while in his degree and, in total, he has 20 publications, including an Editorial and 19 research papers (4 of which as lead author and 1 as co-first author), in well-established international peer-reviewed scientific journals (including 3 in Nature Communications), with an accumulated IF of over 144, 700+ citations and h-index 12 (Scopus). 

F Pinto was awarded the prize “Prémio Fundação Eng. António de Almeida” that distinguishes the best FCUP PhD thesis in the areas of Life Sciences, Agricultural Sciences and Landscape Architecture. He is also inventor in recently granted patents describing the neutral sites technology in the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 (European Patents EP3106521 & EP3461897).