SPEAKERS

Maria Manuela Estevez Pintado is currently Full Professor with Habilitation of the College of Biotechnology of the Portuguese Catholic University (ESB-UCP), Associate Director of School of Biotechnology from Universidade Católica Portuguesa (ESB-UCP, Porto, Portugal) and the director of CBQF (Chemistry and Biotechnology Center – State Associate Laboratory), a research unit and Associate Laboratory, and President of EBRI – European Biotechnology Research Institute (EBRI) and Co-founder of INSURE.hub (INnovation in SUstainability and REgeneration Hub). In the research field, she is the Head of Bioactive and Bioproducts Research Laboratory.  

Academically, she has a B.Sc. in Pharmacy (Clinical Analysis and Pharmacy options) from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Porto (1991), she attended the curricular part of the Food Science and Engineering Masters from the Portuguese Catholic University (1993) and finished her Ph.D. in Biotechnology (in the field of Food Science and Engineering) from the Portuguese Catholic University in 1999.  

Among other relevant activities some are highlighted: Coordinator of the partnership and Project Biorbis-UCP (since 2023),  Elementis-UCP (since 2023),  Amyris-UCP (2016-2024), Member of the Advisory Council of COTEC Portugal – Business Association for Innovation (since 2025),  Member of UCP Quality Council (since 2024), Member of IBET advisory Member (since 2016), Member of Strategic Group for AgroFood, Forest and Biodiversity and  Member of Strategic Group for Circular Economy nominated by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Vice-President of the Scientific Council for Natural and Environmental Sciences (CCCNA) of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), one of the four Scientific Councils established by FCT (2013-2016), Coordinator of the Evaluation Committee of Final Reports of FCT projects for Biological Engineering and Biotechnology area (since 2013), Vice-President of European Chitin Society (since 2013-2017), Chair for SIG (Special Interest Group) – Bioactive Compounds of ISEKI Food Association (since 2014), member of several National and International Evaluation Committee for post-graduate studies and research projects. She has established strong interaction with industry and has been the Coordinator of the Department of Scientific Services for Industry (SETIF) (2013-2016). Additionally, she has been an invited professor at Paraíba Federal University (from 2012 to 2016). 

The research can be summarized into (i) development, compositional characterization and validation of bioactivity of functional and bioactive ingredients (proteins and biopeptides, antioxidants, probiotics, prebiotics and antimicrobials) and study applications on the development of novel functional foods and other added value applications (ii) by-product and new resources valorization through bioprocesses and extraction processes aiming to obtain molecules/extracts fully characterized in terms of composition, bioactivities, functionalities and safety to be explored as high-added value bioproducts in different high-value fields (iii) application of the above research developments to other Biotechnological fields. 

During her scientific trajectory, she published several papers (ca.850 papers) in refereed international journals and authored 98 chapters in handbooks on these topics, and creator of  30 family patents. She has a h-index of 88 with ca. 33,500 citations.   

She has participated in several professional meetings, international symposia and congresses, presenting 220 invited oral communications, ca. 300 selected oral communications and about 750 posters at National and International conferences. She supervises(ed) or co-supervises(ed) 80 MSc, 80 PhD thesis and 50 post-doc scholarships as well as 50 international training scholarships and 90 research grants. She has participated in 85 PhD evaluation panels and 70 MSc. evaluation panels. Additionally, she has been responsible for the coordination and co-coordination of more then 120 externally funded (through national and international funds) research and development projects and has been involved in collaborations with multiple Universities and Research Centers, companies and Associations/technology clusters. Given her overall curricular merit, she has been recognized by the Ciência Viva program as one of the female faces of the Portuguese science community in its book dedicated to Portuguese scientist women. Yet, she is one of the scientists in the World’s Top Most Cited Researchers in the last 7 years (since 2019) in the area of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forest, according to the “World”s Top 2% Scientists” ranking, prepared by Stanford University (USA) and also highlighted for their impact on science throughout their career.