Speakers

Sustainability, competitiveness and innovation in the context of climate change - the contribute of science to increase the value of agri-food sector, essential in inland regions

Principal Coordinator Professor in the field of Biochemistry; She was Vice-President of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Director of the Mountain Research Center and Mentor of the MORE – Mountains of Research Collaborative Laboratory – Association; She is one of the most cited researchers in the world (top 1%), being distinguished in the last 7 years at the Essential Science Indicators ranking; She received several awards; In 2019, she received the European award for Social Innovation by the European Commission; She coordinated the Scientific Council for Natural and Environmental Sciences from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and was member in the Advisory Board for the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO - Belgium). She was Chief-Editor of Antioxidants, Associated Editor of Food & Function and Bioactive Compounds Collection from Molecules journal, and member of the editorial team of Food and Chemical Toxicology, Industrial Crops and Products and Advances in Food and Nutrition Research; Currently, she is the Secretary of State for the Development of Inland Regions from the XXII Constitutional Government of Portugal.

Antarctica: What can penguins tell us about the impact of climate change?

José Xavier (University of Cambridge, PhD) is a professor at the University of Coimbra and Honorary Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey (Cambridge), collaborating with more than 20 countries. José studies the behaviour of top predators (E.g. penguins, albatrosses, seals) in the Southern Ocean in relation to climate change, since 1997. José is the Head of Delegation of Portugal at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings and in various committees of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research, as well as being part of the executive committee of various international scientific programs. José was the youngest researcher to be awarded the international award Marta T. Muse for his work of excellence in Antarctic science and politics. José is also coordinator of projects related to education and outreach, he was one of the winners of the essay competition of the science magazine New Scientist and of the British Foundation Wellcome Trust.

Environmental Influences on Human Reproductive Health

Dr Watkins’ research interests have focused on how factors affecting early reproductive and developmental processes could impact on the long-term health of the resultant offspring. Dr Watkins conducted his Ph.D and post doctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Tom Fleming at the University of Southampton investigating the impact of mouse embryo culture and maternal diet on long-term adult health. In 2011, Dr Watkins was awarded a University of Nottingham Advanced Research Fellowship, under which he started his investigation into the role of paternal nutrition on sperm quality and adult offspring cardiovascular and metabolic health in the mouse. Following this, Dr Watkins continued his paternal programming research under an Aston University research fellowship defining the sperm and seminal fluid specific mechanisms linking paternal diet with offspring health. In 2017, Dr Watkins moved back to the University of Nottingham as an Assistant Professor where he continues to determine how paternal diet impacts on sperm epigenetic status, preimplantation embryo development, fetal growth and offspring health.

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: Basic knowledge on a novel disease

Professor Dr. Thomas Efferth is Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology, Institute of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. He is biologist by training (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany). He has been awarded the Prize of the Southwest German Association for Medicine (1991), Willmar-Schwabe-Award of the German Society for Medicinal Plant Research (2006), citizen medal of the City of Heidelberg, Germany (2008), CESAR Award for Translational Oncology (2011), SCENTEDdrop Award on medicinal and flagrant herbs (2015), Qihuang International Award of the Chinese Association of Chinese Medicine (2017). Since 2018, he is a full member of the World Academy of Sciences. In 2020, he was ranked in the Stanford University Citation Ranking among the top 2% of all scientists and scientific disciplines. In 2009, he took over the Chair of Pharmaceutical Biology (full professorship) at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. He is honorary professor at the Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, and at the Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China. Moreover, he is visiting professor at the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou, China and honorary adjunct professor at the Chinese University Hong Kong.

Dr Efferth holds 8 patents and published 700 PubMed-listed papers in peer-reviewed journals in the field of cancer research, pharmacology, and natural products and a textbook on ‘Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology’ (Springer Publisher; 2006).

The focus of Dr. Efferth's research is on tumor pharmacology, network pharmacology, natural products and, recently, also on COVID-19. A major topic is research on chemical entities from natural sources; systems biology and bioinformatical approaches to unravel modes of actions of synthetic and natural compounds with activity against otherwise drug-resistant tumors and infectious agents (basic research); and predictive and prognostic markers for personalized medicine (translational research)."

MAREFOZ an active element in knowledge transfer and economic development

He has a degree in Biology from the University of Lisbon, in 1980, and a PhD in Ecology from the University of Coimbra, in 1989. He was President of IMAR - “Instituto do Mar” (Portugal) from 1997 to 2006, and Vice-Rector for Research of the University of Coimbra, from 2003 to 2007. Currently, he is the Director of MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre. He is specialized in Marine Biology and Ecology, with research work focused on biological and ecological processes in marine systems, ecology of systems and ecological modelation. Since 1990, he was principal coordinator of 18 research projects financed by National and European Framework Funding. Until now, he was author and co-author of more than 300 scientific articles in international journals, 7 books and 24 book chapters (international editions), and advisor of 51 Master theses and 34 PhD theses, concluded with success, in Portugal and abroad. In 2017, he received the Prigogine Gold Medal Award, Wessex Institute of Technology (UK) and University of Siena (Italy). He is the Chief-Editor of Ecological Indicators e Environmental and Sustainability Indicators journals.

Methylmercury and Neurodegeneration: What can we learn from Worms?

Full Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Neuroscience, Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY, Harold and Muriel Block Chair in Molecular Pharmacology and Member of the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. His research interests lie on the interaction genetics vs environment in triggering disease both during CNS development and senescence, and in metal uptake and distribution in the brain. His research has been devoted to the mechanisms of transport of methylmercury (MeHg) and manganese (Mn) across the capillaries composing the blood–brain barrier (BBB), as well as their cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurotoxicity. With ample experience in both in vivo and in vitro models of BBB, he has tested the transport of metals into the brain, including uranium, under a DoD funded grant. His studies address basic mechanisms in various experimental models (C. elegans, tissue culture and rodents), designed to (i) increase the understanding of the genetic influences on health especially as it relates to neurological diseases; (ii) increase knowledge of the pathways involved in neurotoxicity and impact of these processes on neurodegeneration; (iii) develop improved research models for environmental sciences and biology; and (iv) use environmental toxicants to understand basic mechanisms of neurobiology. Over the last 3 decades, his studies (1) shed novel mechanistic insight into metal-induced neurodegeneration; (2) identified targets for genetic or pharmacologic modulation of neurodegenerative disorders; (3) increased knowledge of the pathway involved in brain-induced oxidative stress; (4) developed improved research models for human disease using knowledge of environmental sciences. He was the PI on several NIH and EPA grants, is/was Editor and Associate Editor of >22 journals, published >800 articles (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=aschner+m) with >49,000 citations and an h-index of 103 (Google Scholar).

Personality and pandemic(s)

Ana Telma is a psychologist, working as Auxiliary Researcher at Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, where she also teaches on pre and post-graduate courses related to psychological medicine, mental health and research methodologies. Her main scientific interests are women’s mental health, (perinatal) affective disorders, eating disorders, personality and emotional (dis)regulation and development/validation of psychological instruments. Recently, she has also been dedicated to burnout in (medical) students and interns. As a clinical psychologist at a Faculty of Medicine she felt that she had to direct a research line to understand and alleviate this public health and social problem. Her group has recently published a paper that aroused great interest both in the academy and media, due to its innovation (COVID-19 psychological impact: The role of perfectionism. PAID, 184). Within the scope of the project in which this study was carried out, they have obtained two prizes for the best communications at recent national congresses of psychiatry.

Sofia Carlton is a Business Development Manager at Evelo Biosciences. Prior to joining the BD team in June of 2021, Sofia was a Senior Scientist at Evelo Biosciences where she led the preclinical efforts to identify drug candidates for treating metabolic diseases, a new therapeutic area for the company. Prior to joining Evelo, Sofia conducted the research work for her PhD thesis at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, as a visiting student from the University of Coimbra and the PDBED program. During her PhD, Sofia first took and then co-directed the Harvard Healthcare Innovation and Commercialization course. She was also a fellow with the Harvard Biotech Incubator, where she performed due diligence on an early-stage startup. Sofia has been a mentor for several programs, including Big Sister Boston, the STEM Hub for Industry Networking and Exchange, and the MassBay Community College STEM Mentoring Program.

Alexandre Gaspar Maia, PhD, studied Ciências do Meio Aquático at ICBAS, Universidade do Porto and did his internship with Prof. Leonor Teles Grilo in Molecular Genetics, while also working at Estação Litoral da Aguda with Prof. Mike Weber. He joined the PDBEB program in 2003, where he travelled to UCSF in San Francisco to work on his PhD thesis project in Chromatin regulation of embryonic stem cells, in the laboratory of Miguel Ramalho Santos. After completing his postdoctoral training with Emily Bernstein in Mount Sinai New York (2010-2017), he started his own research group at Mayo Clinic, Rochester Minnesota. His group has been working on various aspects of transcription and enhancer regulation with implications in cellular heterogeneity and drug resistance in cancer and cellular reprogramming. The goal is to use epigenomic profiling to better understand cancer programs associated with malignancy, metastasis and drug sensitivity and define transcriptional dependencies. He has received numerous awards, namely two postdoctoral fellowships from the USA Department of Defense (2011-2014) and New York Stem Cell Foundation (2014-2017), a C1 Award for Single-Cell analysis from Fluidigm (2016), an NIH Career Enhancement award from the Mayo Clinic Ovarian Cancer SPORE (2019-2020) and the Young Investigator DoD Ovarian Cancer Academy award (2021-2025). He has published numerous high impact papers in journals such as Nature, Cell Stem Cell, Cell Reports and Nature Communications amongst others, and has presented his work internationally in the US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, and Japan.