Guilherme N M Ferreira

Guilherme Ferreira graduated in Chemical Engineering (MEng) from IST-Lisbon in 1996 and completed is PhD in Biotechnology from IST-Lisbon in 2000. In 2007, G Ferreira completed is Habilitation (Agregação) in Bioengineering at IST-Lisbon. In January 2001, Guilherme Ferreira was appointed for an Assistant Professor position at the University of Algarve. As an Independent researcher at the University of Algarve he was founder of the Centre for Molecular and Structural Biomedicine (CBME-www.ualg.pt/cbme) of which he is member of the Executive Committee. Guilherme is one of the mentors and founder of the Associated Laboratory IBB-Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering and also vice president of the institute. At the University of Algarve, Guilherme Ferreira started his own Research Group. The main research activities of the group focus different aspects of Bioengineering, mainly protein expression, biosensors and nanobiotechnology. He has about 28 publications in international scientific journals, 20 of which after his PhD and as a corresponding author. His work was cited 790 times, his h-index is 13, and the average citation per item is 28.2. He completed the supervision of 9 PhD students and 4 Pos-docs. Currently, Guilherme is supervisor of 4 PhD students and 2 Pos-Docs. As a Principal Scientist, in the last five years Guilherme raised 1.5 M€ funds for R&D, 6 M€ for R&D infrastructures at IBB and CBME, and 1M€ grants for PhD students and pos-docs. Currently he collaborates as a reviewer for well known journals in the Bioengineering and Biotechnology area, namely Nature Protocols, Trends in Biotechnology, Journal of Biotechnology, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Biotechnology Progress, Biochemical Engineering Journal, e Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Guilherme Ferreira is very well known to the Biochemical engineering international community. He was the former chairperson of the workgroup of Downstream Processing of the European Federation of Biotechnology’s section on Biochemical Engineering and Science. He was member of the Executive board of the European Federation of Biotechnology, and he is the President of the European Society for Biochemical Engineering Science. Guilherme Ferreira is also member of the Scientific council of the International Society of Molecular Recognition and several other societies as ISPT and BPP. On the framework of these societies, Guilherme organized several international conferences and workshops. To name a few, Guilherme was the conference chair of the ESBES symposium in Faro 2008, in Bologna 2010 and Istanbul 2012, of the Affinity 2011 in Tavira, of BPP in Lisbon 2007, ECCE&ECAB in The Hague 2013. At the University of the Algarve, GNM Ferreira has been involved in the establishment and growing of a biomolecule engineering group focusing different aspects of bioengineering . The group integrates cross-disciplinary expertise focusing the integration of biology and engineering concepts in order to develop better strategies to study and control cellular functions and biomolecules, to develop optimized molecules, processes and procedures leading to better biotherapeutics, diagnostic devices and molecular markers. The expansion of the traditional Bioengineering areas to include Micro and Nanotechnology, aims the integration of nano/microdevices and biosystems to generate powerful methodologies leading to new insights into biological function. Currently, the general reserch aim of GNM Ferreira is to elucidate cells and biomolecule dynamics by integrating the most recent developments in nanotechnology (e.g. nanostructures, nanoparticles and nanocrystals), bioprocessing (e.g recombinant protein production, purification and stabilization), biosensors, and molecular engineering (e.g. site directed mutagenesis) as well as engineering instrumentation, techniques and methodologies to address biological questions. One of the key actions pursuit addresses the new scientific and technological challenges associated with the development of directly transduced methodologies, systems and devices for the quantitative detection and monitoring of biomolecular recognition and cell detection. Another field of interest in the group is the development of protein and polymeric nanoparticles for molecular delivery specifically targeting tumor cells in novel gene and molecular therapy approaches. The core proteins of HIV1 are used to assemble molecular carriers both in vivo and vitro and DNA polymer complexes are developed for DNA delivery vectors for gene therapy.