Asst. Prof. Lígia R. Rodrigues

Prof. Lígia R. Rodrigues is an Associate Professor at University of Minho (UM, Portugal) and currently Vice-Head of the Department of Biological Engineering at the same university. She received her degree in Biological Engineering in 1997, her M.Sc. in Bioprocess Engineering in 2001 and her PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2005 from the University of Minho. In 2006/2007 she was a post-doctoral research fellow at UM; IPATIMUP, University of Porto; University of Lund.

Parts of her graduate, PhD and post-doctoral research were conducted in international labs and included the production and use of bioactive molecules for biomedical applications including anti-biofilm strategies, breast cancer diagnosis, and prevention. In 2007, she joined the faculty of the Department of Biological Engineering (DEB) at UM as an invited assistant professor under the MIT-Portugal Program (until 2011). In 2008, she was a short-term visiting scholar at MIT, where she attended several courses on Innovation, also collaborating with MIT research groups, as well as in the transference of good practices in Education and Innovation and Technology Licensing from MIT to Portuguese universities.

Since 2010, she integrated the Bioprocess Systems Biology Group where she established her research group within the field of synthetic biology. Her current research interests are synthetic biology, cancer diagnosis and prevention, bioprocess development and functional food. In the last years, she successfully captured funding for a number of research projects, doctoral and post-doctoral grants. Several researchers have been conducting their post-doc, PhD or MSc studies under her supervision. Her international recognition, particularly in the work on Bioactive Molecules, led to the collaboration with many research and industrial leading groups, as well as the accomplishment of many research projects. Besides, she has been involved in the launching of several spin-off companies in the Life Sciences field. Currently, she is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU).