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Zélia Alves is a researcher in the Department of Materials and Ceramics Engineering. She holds a PhD in Sustainable Chemistry from the University of Aveiro, where she studied the development of polysaccharide-based nanocomposites for active food packaging. During her academic career, she has participated in four research projects: 2 national and 2 European. She has published 8 peer-reviewed scientific articles and has presented several oral and poster presentations at both international and national conferences. In her recent studies, she has focused on developing fire-resistant and low-density materials specifically for the construction industry, utilizing industrial waste in innovative ways.
Rita Bastos has a Biochemistry degree, an MSc in Food Biotechnology, and a PhD in Sustainable Chemistry from the University of Aveiro. She has focused her research on polysaccharide chemistry and by-product valuation. Throughout her MSc and PhD, she conducted research on brewer's spent yeast, driving advancements in yeast cell wall carbohydrate knowledge. She also developed yeast-derived microcapsules and studied their interaction with the innate immune system, aiming towards spent yeast valuation in immunotherapy delivery systems. Currently, she is working in R&D at the Colab4Food Association, closely collaborating with the University of Aveiro to leverage networking between academia and the agri-food industry.
François Bonnardel holds a PhD in Bioinformatics and Structural Biology obtained jointly from the University of Grenoble Apes, France, and the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 2021. During his PhD, he gained data science, programming, development, and computational, structural and systems biology competencies. He conceived and developed several databases, including the UnilLectin.portal, a worldwide recognised contribution for the exploration, classification and prediction of lectin embedding Unilectin3D, PropLec and LectomeXplore databases. Since 2021, he has worked as a Bioinformatics Pipeline developer at Inivata, NeoGenomics, in the UK.
Alícia Candeias is a Master’s Research Fellowship holder under the project “GlycoMed: A new generation of enzymes for biofilm dispersion and immunomodulation in cancer” in the Macromolecular Crystallography and Functional Glycobiology (GlycoLab) groups (UCIBIO). She obtained her Master’s degree in Biochemistry in 2022 and her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry in 2020, both from the FCT-NOVA. Her work is focused on characterizing, at a molecular level, novel proteins produced by the microbiota and its influence on host biology, through the study of protein-carbohydrate interactions. Her work is primarily conducted in the areas of structural biology and glycobiology.
Ana Luísa Carvalho completed a PhD in Structural Biology in 2002 and held a position as a Senior Researcher at UCIBIO-NOVA, starting in 2003. Her research interests focus on searching for uncharacterised biological protein-carbohydrate interactions with potential biotechnological use in nutrition in pharma and the biofuel industry. For this, among other structural biology and biophysics methods, she uses the powerful information provided by X-ray crystallography. Currently, she is committed to implementing cryo-electron microscopy methods at UCIBIO, and, for this, she coordinates the FCT-NOVA node of the CryoEM-PT National Roadmap Infrastructure.
Elisabete Coelho completed her PhD in Chemistry at University of Aveiro in 2010. She is a Researcher at University of Aveiro working on the valuation of by-products from the agro-food industry – extraction of polysaccharides with bioactive properties for use as food ingredients and in biomedical applications. She was coordinator of a research project entitled Yeast4FoodMed – Valuation of brewer’s spent yeast polysaccharides for food and biomedical applications. She participates in several research projects funded by different European and Portuguese entities, and industry. She specializes in glycosciences. Her research activities focus on structural characterization of polysaccharides and structure-function relationships.
Manuel A. Coimbra is a Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Aveiro, Portugal, teaching Biochemistry and Food Chemistry, and Director of the BSc Graduation in Biochemistry. He received his BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Porto and his PhD in Chemistry/Food Chemistry at the University of Aveiro in 1993. Since 2011, he has been Editor of Carbohydrate Polymers (2022 IF = 11.2). His principal research interests are polysaccharide chemistry, food chemistry, and biochemistry. His research projects have involved close collaboration with industry, with 8 registered patents, supervision of 25 PhD students and 13 post-docs, and 330 papers published (h-index = 60).
Viviana Correia is a PhD student in the Molecular Biosciences program, in the Functional Glycobiology (GlycoLab) and Macromolecular Crystallography groups (UCIBIO). Her research project, “Deciphering glycan:protein interactions in the human microbiome – a combined high-throughput and structural approach”, aims at elucidating carbohydrate-binding specificities of polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) proteins from representative strains of the human gut microbiota, which play a key role in human nutritional balance and immune system modulation. Her strategy includes production of a recombinant-protein library; high-throughput screening in carbohydrate microarrays comprising a diverse range of glycan probes; and elucidation of the 3D-structure of protein:glycan ligand complexes using X-ray crystallography.
Raquel Costa is a PhD student in the Molecular Biosciences program and is working towards her PhD in the Functional Glycobiology (GlycoLab) and Macromolecular Crystallography groups (UCIBIO). The main goal of her research is to elucidate the interaction of PUL proteins from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (prominent human gut bacteria) for host-derived glycans, particularly mucins that act as a barrier to protect the human gut epithelium. To address that, Raquel uses X-ray crystallography and carbohydrate microarray technology as main methodologies. Her work will be important to understand how bacteria establish molecular communication with the host and how this glycan recognition influences human health and disease.
Paula Ferreira is a Coordinator Researcher at the University of Aveiro. She has successfully secured over EUR 3000k in funding for research. She has been a Principal and Co-Investigator in more than 20 academic and industrial projects. She has supervised 13 post-doctoral fellows, 18 PhD students, 37 MSc students, and 40 final year students. She has mentored more than 30 initial research fellows. Paula has published over 157 papers, with 3708 citations (h-index 33). She has been engaged in fostering international collaborations, including bilateral cooperation agreements, as well as 13 COST actions. Her role has varied from being a participant in working groups to serving as a member of the management committee, working group leader, and communication coordinator. Paula's interests lie in the synthesis, structural and physical characterization, and processing of nanofunctional and nanoporous materials, with applications in healthcare, microelectronics, environmental remediation and energy. Additionally, she shows keen interest in sustainable functional bionanocomposites, specifically for flexible device applications and smart packaging.
Angélique Ferry started her PhD in 2010 (Prof. Crich, Dr Guinchard) and received the Dina Surdin PhD Award from the French Chemical Society (SCF) in 2014. Then, she joined the group of Prof. Glorius and in 2015 became an Associate Professor at the CY Cergy-Paris University, where she develops metal-catalyzed functionalization on glycosides. She received the “Women and Science” award from the CY ALLIANCE in 2018 and the Marc Julia Award from the SCF and the GFG Award of the French Group of Glycosciences in 2020. In 2023, she obtained a junior position at the Institut Universitaire de France.
Florian Gallier was born in 1980 and raised in Normandy. He earned his PhD in Chemistry from both the Université du Maine and the Leibniz University under the joint supervision of Dr G. Dujardin and Prof. A. Kirschning. After post-doctoral research with Prof. J.-M. Beau at Université Paris-Sud and then with Prof. P. Pale at Université de Strasbourg, he was appointed assistant professor at CY Cergy-Paris Université in 2011. He is currently interested in the development of novel sustainable methodologies towards C-glycoside/nucleoside synthesis and their biological application.
Simon Gonzalez was born in Alès, France, and studied at the Chemical Engineering School of Lille. He obtained his PhD in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry in 2017 at CY Cergy Paris University under the supervision of Prof. Nadège Lubin-Germain, dealing with the development of carbohydrates and fusion peptides for a vectorization strategy. In 2018, he joined the group of Prof. Steven Ballet at Vrije Universiteit Brussel where he worked on multitarget analgesic peptides. In 2020, he was appointed assistant professor at CY Cergy Paris University where his research is currently focused on locally constrained and/or fluorinated membranotropic peptides.
Eva Lourenço studied Chemistry at Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa (2006), followed by a master’s degree in Green Chemistry and a PhD in Biotechnology at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa – ITQB NOVA (2013). She is the founder and Head of R&D at Extremochem, a chemical synthesis start-up that develops small organic molecules for the stabilisation of biopharmaceuticals.
Nadege Lubin-Germain obtained her PhD from the University of Paris-Saclay under the supervision of Prof. André Lubineau. Then she moved to The Research Institute of Jülich in Germany in the bioconversions field and then to the CY Cergy Paris Université in 1994. She joined the glycochemists group under the supervision of Prof J. Augé. She was appointed Professor in 2010 and recently joined the BioCIS Laboratory. Her research fields deal with non-natural C-carbohydrates including C-glycosides, C-nucleosides, and C-glycosylated biomolecules for biological applications.
Catarina Maria completed her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Lisbon in 2020, followed by the completion of her master's degree in Bioorganic Chemistry at the NOVA University of Lisbon in 2022. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at the University of Lisbon, focusing on her primary interests in carbohydrate chemistry, medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry.
Cláudia Nunes is a Researcher at CICECO – Aveiro Institute of Materials at the University of Aveiro. She has held a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Aveiro since May 2008. Her main scientific interests include the development of biomaterials based on polysaccharides for application in the biomedical and food areas. Her experience is recognized by the publication of 1 patent, 8 book chapters and 108 articles in international journals cited in the Science Citation Index, with 2800 citations (h-index = 31). She has coordinated and participated in several research projects funded by national and European programs (28 in total). She has supervised 3 post-doctoral fellows, 18 PhD students, 39 MSc students, and 40 final year students.
Angelina S. Palma completed her PhD in Biochemistry in 2007, and is presently an Assistant Professor and leader of the Functional Glycobiology Lab at UCIBIO, FCT-NOVA. She developed pioneering work in applying glycan microarrays to study endogenous recognition systems and virus-host interactions. In 2013, she was awarded a 5-year FCT Investigator Grant to apply glycan-microarrays and structural biology to study glycan recognition by microbes. Her research fosters knowledge in Glycobiology and glyco-technologies to study human microbiome interactions and cancer. Currently, she co-coordinates the GLYCOTwinning international network in Glycoscience, funded by Horizon Europe.
Serge Perez holds a Doctorate es Sciences from the University of Grenoble, France. He had international exposure throughout several academic and industry positions in research laboratories in the U.S.A., Canada, and France (Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolecules Végétales, CNRS, Grenoble, as the chairperson and as Director of Research at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility). His research interests span structural glycoscience and e-learning, for which he created www.glycopedia.eu. He is involved in scientific societies as president and past president of the European Carbohydrate Organisation. He is the author of more than 330 research publications and three books on the bioeconomy of natural resources.
Benedita Pinheiro is a senior researcher in the Functional Glycobiology (GlycoLab) group (UCIBIO). She obtained a PhD in Animal Science and Technology in 2010 (University of Lisbon), studying the assembly and function of the bacterial multi-enzymatic complex involved in plant cell wall carbohydrate degradation, the cellulosome. Her main scientific interests are in protein–protein interactions and in the study of carbohydrate-interacting proteins such as lectins and carbohydrate-binding modules. Being a member of the GlycoLab from the beginning, she implemented the protein microarray technology. Benedita contributes to the ongoing GlycoLab projects with her expertise in molecular biology, protein production and X-ray crystallography.
Gwladys Pourceau, born in Le Mans in 1985, obtained her PhD in biomolecular engineering in Montpellier under the supervision of Dr F. Morvan in 2010. Then, she was a post-doctoral fellow at CICBIOMAGUNE (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain) where she worked on metallic glyconanoparticles. In 2012, she became an assistant-professor at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, then an associate professor in 2023. Her research interests are focused on the development of greener procedures (especially based on nanocatalysis/photocatalysis) for the transformation of free carbohydrates.
Lucie Quehon obtained her PhD at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens under the supervision of Prof. Anne Wadouachi and Dr Gwladys Pourceau within the “ANR JCJC CARBOPHOTON” project. She worked on the one-pot oxidative modification of free sugars using supported gold nanocatalysts to obtain high value-added biobased products (sugar lactones, esters and amides).
Amélia P. Rauter has been affiliated to CiênciasULisboa since 1984. As a Full Professor in Organic Chemistry, her research covers natural products and molecules derived thereof against neurodegeneration and infection. She serves IUPAC Division III as Past-President, the International Carbohydrate Organisation as Past-President, and the European Carbohydrate Organisation as Secretary. She is an editor of SPR Carbohydrate Chemistry – Chemical and Biological Approaches, editor-in-chief of Pharmaceuticals, and an advisory/editorial board member of other reputed scientific journals. She received the Madinaveitia-Lourenzo Prize from the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry in 2017 in recognition of her research in chemistry, the awards Chemistry Europe Fellow and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Mention of Excellence in all evaluations by curricular ponderation since 2007.
Diana Ribeiro completed a PhD in Biochemistry in 2020 and has since worked as a Junior Researcher at UCIBIO-NOVA. Her research interests focus on developing platforms that use carbohydrate microarray technology to allow the detailed characterisation of protein carbohydrate interactions in bacterial systems, such as in the human gut microbiome and host-pathogen interactions. She is also committed to creating web-based resources providing curated structural and functional data, particularly on carbohydrate-binding modules, ligand interactions and bacterial polysaccharides.
After a post-doctoral stay of eleven years in Prof. Pierre Sinaÿ’s laboratory, Patrick Rollin created and developed his own research group at the Institut de Chimie Organique et Analytique (ICOA), focusing particularly on thiochemistry applied to the carbohydrate field, and the phytochemistry of secondary metabolites in the botanical order Brassicales – namely glucosinolates and isothiocyanates and the chemistry of glycerol and oligoglycerols. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at the Université d’Orléans (France).
After graduating in Biology and Geology (2004), R. F. N. Silva served as a contract teacher for the Portuguese Ministry of Education, and as a junior Editor for a publisher group in Portugal. In 2013, he entered the Post-graduation Program in Biotechnology at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, where he achieved an MSc degree in 2015, and a PhD in 2019, both in Biotechnology, working in molecular docking and rational drug design of small molecules. Presently, R. F. N. Silva devotes his time to teaching and creating projects to awaken interest in science for high school students in Portugal.
Sandrina Silva graduated in Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon in 2004, and obtained her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Université d'Orléans and University of Lisbon in 2009, supervised by Prof. Patrick Rollin and Prof. Amélia Pilar Rauter. She then enrolled in post-doctoral research at ETH-Zürich, in Prof. Vasella’s group and, from 2010 to 2013, worked as a post-doctoral researcher at University of Aveiro, in Prof. Cavaleiro's team. She then moved to Brazil, to Federal University of São Carlos, working as a post-doctoral researcher in Prof. Marcio Paixão's group until 2017. Presently, she is a Scale-Up team research leader at Laboratório Cristália, Brazil.
Leandro Soter de Mariz e Miranda obtained his PhD in 2007 at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro under the supervision of Dr Mário Vasconcellos. Then he moved to a nucleoside specialized industry in Brazil working on the development and scale up of new synthetic routes for the synthesis of nucleosides. In 2011 he joined the Chemistry Institute at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro as an associate professor in the Organic Chemistry Department. His research interests include the synthesis of new C-nucleosides, continuous-flow chemistry and biocatalysis.
Filipa Trovão is a PhD student in Biochemistry in the Functional Glycobiology (GlycoLab) and Macromolecular Crystallography groups (UCIBIO). Her research interest is to study, at a molecular level, protein interactions that operate biological systems in human health, to understand the biological mechanisms. Towards this, her main scientific interests are structural biology and glycobiology. Her PhD research project, entitled “Translating the human-microbiome molecular cross-talk using glycan microarray and structural biology strategies”, aims to decipher how the structural diversity of host-derived glycans is exploited by Bacteroides caccae (a resident bacteria of the human gut microbiota) and how it influences commensal vs. pathogenic interactions.
Jacques Uziel was born in Athens, Greece and studied organic chemistry at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He obtained his PhD from the same university under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Pierre Genêt. Since 1992, he has been an Associate Professor at CY Cergy Paris Université, initially in the group of Prof. Sylvain Jugé, where he worked on stereogenic phosphorus chemistry. In 2000, he spent a year at the University of Florence in the group of Prof. Anna Maria Papini. His current research activity at BioCIS deals with C-glycoside synthesis, in particular nucleosides with antiviral and antitumor properties.
Maria Rita Ventura studied Pharmaceutical Sciences at Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade de Lisboa (1995) followed by a PhD in Organic Synthesis at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa – ITQB NOVA (1999). She continued her post-doctoral studies at FCT and ITQB NOVA. She has been the head of the Bioorganic Chemistry Laboratory at ITQB NOVA since October 2005. Her main research interests are carbohydrate chemistry, asymmetric synthesis, the total synthesis of natural compounds and analogues with improved biological properties, stereoselective organocatalysis and medicinal chemistry.
Anne Wadouachi has been a Full Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of Picardie Jules Verne since 2011. Her research interests include the development of sustainable chemical modifications of free carbohydrates (mono- and oligosaccharides), particularly through green strategies using microwave-assisted syntheses, mechanosynthesis and catalysis to obtain platform molecules and high-added value carbohydrate derivatives for biomedical applications.
