Maria De Fátima Silva Lopes

FS Lopes was born in 1969. Entered school in 1975 and University in 1987. FS Lopes graduated in Biochemistry by Faculdade de Ciências from Universidade de Lisboa in 1992. After some time as a grantee in an IBET project, she engaged on her PhD studies in Biochemistry completed in 1999 at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica. During her PhD, she had the opportunity to work for short periods in laboratories in The Netherlands and Germany. During her time as post-doc (until 2003), she started to enroll in her present subject of study, devoting also some time to teaching at the University. Her interests have since then been to understand how a commensal bacteria becomes pathogenic in special circumstances, namely in patients with lower immune capacity and subjected to antibiotic therapy. Aiming, in long term, to find new approaches and molecules to fight opportunistic nosocomial pathogens, she chose Enterococcus as a model organism. She started this path in 2000, during her post-doc, but it was in 2003 that she got a group leader position as an independent researcher. However, her first FCT project as a principal investigator was won during her post-doc. During her post-doc she was already working as an independent researcher, publishing as corresponding author and supervising her own students. Since 2003 her group grew up to comprise 9 investigators and she completed the supervision of 6 master thesis (3 of which were the old Master degree in Portugal), 6 PhD students, one post-doc and several undergraduate students. She has also been involved (in classes and tutorials) in the ITQB PhD Program since its beginning. Since her PhD, FS Lopes published several works in peer reviewed journals, presented several posters in international and national meetings and 9 oral presentations (presented either by her or her students) in international meetings and institutions abroad by invitation. She is also co-author of two book chapters. FS Lopes got financing from both National and International calls for projects, namely four FCT projects as Principal Investigator, one Era-net Pathogenomics (as the Portuguese partner in the consortium), and one bi-lateral collaboration (Pessoa Program) with France. After her PhD she managed to build strong and solid collaborations with the most prominent groups in her field which were translated into publications, and allowed training of PhD students. After several years as a researcher, she worked 3 years as the Education Manager of the PhD Program in Bioengineering Systems of the MIT-Portugal Program. She recently embraced a new challenge, working as a researcher at the National Intitute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge, Portugal, in the B1MG Prtoject, a Coordination and Support Action for the 1+ Million Genomes Initiative. FS Lopes is also often invited to referee manuscripts for publication in high impact factor journals of her area and invited to referee PhD thesis discussions.