Rita Mota is Senior Researcher at Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB GmbH), based at University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Tulln, Austria. Previously, R. Mota was a Post-Doc Researcher in Bioengineering & Synthetic Microbiology Group at i3S/IBMC, and an Invited Adjunct Professor at ISEP-School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal. R. Mota is graduated in Biology by Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto (FCUP) in 2008, master in Biology by FCUP in 2010, and doctor in Biology by FCUP in 2017 (awarded best “Fundação Eng. António de Almeida” PhD thesis in Life Sciences FCUP 2017-2019) in collaboration with the Dept. Agrifood Production and Environmental Sciences, University of Florence, Italy. R. Mota published 23 articles in peer-reviewed journals (7 as 1st author & 2 as senior author), 3 book chapters (1 as 1st author) (citations 616, h-index 14, Scopus database 07/23), and is inventor in 1 USA and 1 EU granted patents (US11458202B2 & EP3762054A1). R. Mota has been an active member in 2 Austrian projects (as PI), 1 Spanish project (CaixaImpulse as Co-PI), and 9 Portuguese projects (3 as PI, 1 as task leader), as well as participated in 5 distinct entrepreneurship accelerating programs as team leader, and received 9 innovation and merit awards/honours. R. Mota is specialized in cyanobacterial extracellular polymers, studying its characteristics, biosynthesis, production optimization and possible novel biotechnological/biomedical applications.