People

Maria João Romão

Project PI, Full Professor @ NOVA FCT

I am Full Professor of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at the School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon (NOVA-FCT) since 2012. I have obtained my PhD in Chemistry in 1989 at IST-Lisbon University (Prof Bernardo Herold) that included a stay of 18 months at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) fuer Kohlenforschung, Mulheim an der Ruhr, Germany (Prof Carl Krueger) (1980-1982).

Arwen Pearson

Full Professor @ UHH (Germany) and DESY

I am a biophysicist with a background in X-ray crystallography, single crystal spectroscopy and structural enzymology and a strong interest in the development of new methods to probe biological molecular mechanisms. I obtained a BSc(hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Bath (1997) and a PhD in structural biology from the University of St Andrews (2001), working with Garry Taylor.

Barbara Schoepp-Cothenet

Director of Research @ BIP CNRS

Barbara Schoepp-Cothenet graduated in Biochemistry from Montpellier SupAgro and AgroParisTech. She joined the André Verméglio’s group at the CEA Cadarache, where she performed her PhD work on the structure and function of bc1 complex in bacterial photosynthesis. Her work established for the first time the in vivo participation of the high-potential iron-sulfur protein HiPIP in bacterial photosynthesis.

Carolina Videira

Research fellow @ NOVA FCT

Carolina Videira has a Master's degree in Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine at NOVA School of Science and Technology (NOVA-SST). The Master's thesis was titled "Structural and functional studies of the drug metabolizing enzyme, aldehyde oxidase" and the key working areas are Structural Biology (X-Ray crystallography) and Molecular Biology.

Cristiano Mota

Co-PI, Assistant Professor @ NOVA FCT

Cristiano Mota has been an Assistant Professor at NOVA FCT since 2025. From 2023 to 2025, he worked as an Assistant Researcher at UCIBIO-NOVA, having been awarded a contract through the highly competitive 2022 Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC) programme, promoted by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from NOVA University Lisbon (2011).

Himanshu Sharma

CryoEM@NOVA Group Leader @ NOVA FCT

Himanshu did his engineering studies and PhD in India. During his PhD at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, he focused on investigating ribosome biogenesis in prokaryotes using biochemical and transcriptomic methods. During this time, he was funded by the National doctoral fellowship and a Senior research fellowship.

Joanne Santini

Consultant, Full Professor @ UCL (UK)

JOANNE SANTINI is Full Professor of Microbiology at UCL (UK) and her multiple research inter

Márcia Correia

Scientific Project Manager @ NOVAid

Márcia graduated in Biochemistry at Universidade de Lisboa in 2004 and completed her PhD in Science and Animal Technology at Universidade Técnica de Lisboa in 2010. Since then, she had published 19 papers (first author of 8, h-index 10) with over 474 citations (Scopus author).

Maria Gabriela Machado de Almeida

Associated Professor @ IUEM

M. Gabriela Almeida received her undergraduate education in Chemistry at Universidade de Lisboa and a MSc. degree in Biotechnology from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. She completed her Doctoral studies in 2003, at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Gabriela Almeida is Associated Professor at Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz, Researcher at CiiEM and UCIBIO where she is the head of the GB2 - Group of Biomarkers and Biosensors (http://gb29.webnode.pt/).