Paula Tamagnini is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto (FCUP), Member of the Board of Directors of i3S - Institute for Research and Innovation in Health & Vice-Director of IBMC - Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology, as well as leader of the Bioengineering and Synthetic Microbiology Group at the i3S/IBMC. She was also Vice-Head of the Department of Biology (2010-2018), and member of the Scientific Council (2014-2018) at FCUP. P. Tamagnini graduated in Biology at the Univ. Porto in 1986, but performed most of the experimental work leading to her PhD at the Dept. of Physiological Botany, Uppsala University, Sweden. She presented her thesis “Physiological and molecular characterization of hydrogenases in Nostoc and other cyanobacteria” at FCUP in 1999. At the time, she became Assistant Professor and started to establish herself as an independent researcher at IBMC. In 2002, joined the Cellular and Applied Microbiology Group where she integrated the research team “Bioproducts and Bioremediation” and got her first project approved as PI. Since then, she has been PI in 8 national projects, PI of participating institution/WP leader in a HORIZON-EIC-2021, an ITN, a FP7, a FP6 and 1 national project, as well as team member in 13 others. She participated in several bi-lateral Actions and organized/been in the Scientific Committee of several international meetings. P. Tamagnini is Associate Editor for BMC Microbiology, participated in ERASynBIO strategic conferences, was National Delegate in two EU COST Actions, and is currently Chair of the Scientific Committee for the European Workshop on Biology of Cyanobacteria and member of the International Scientific Committee for the Symposia on Phototrophic Prokaryotes. Moreover, P. Tamagnini supervised 11 post-doctoral fellows, 13 PhD students, 31 MScs (13 as co-supervisor) and several ERAMUS students, and is currently supervising/co-supervising several others.
Along the years, she made significant contributions on the field of physiology and molecular biology of cyanobacteria, particularly on H2ases/H2 metabolism breaking the dogma that the bidirectional H2ase was universally present in cyanobacteria, characterizing H2ases/H2ases related-genes and respective regulatory mechanisms. After the PhD, she pursued other research areas and established new collaborations that led to a project funded by Fundação C. Gulbenkian on cyanobacterial exopolysaccharides (EPS). Afterwards, the crucial steps of EPS biosynthetic pathways, the characterization of the polymers produced, and possible biotechnological and biomedical applications for these polymers are being explored. The participation in one of the first EU projects using synthetic biology (BioModularH2) provided new insights on systems biology and how to rationally engineer bacterial metabolic pathways. This helped to establish a new scientific strategy using bacteria as robust platforms for the production of specialty chemicals/biomaterials.
She published over 95 papers in ISI indexed journals and several book chapters, and is an inventor in 2 EU and 1Us granted patents. P.Tamagnini has also been actively contributing to the public communication of science, notably on the Synthetic Biology area.