Biography

My name is Sara Silva and I hold a PhD in Biotechnology and an MSc in Microbiology. Throughout my academic career, from its early stages up to now, I have been involved (both directly and indirectly) in the conceptualization, plan and execution of an array of different projects, most with industrial partners, focusing on exploiting the intrinsic value of both by- and low-value products, with varying compositions, towards the development of alternatives for food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. Overall, I participated in 1 PAC, 3 FCT and 5 R&D (3 Co-promoção ANI/ADi and 1 Vale Inovação IAPMEI) projects and collaborated in the execution of several others, with one of these collaborations resulting in a patent. I have been in charge of the co-supervision of 2 MSc students¿ thesis (1 backed by an industrial partner from the UK, ANEID); 2 PhD students (1 Alchemy, 1 FCT SFRH/BD/149347/2019) and 7 BSc final projects while also being the co-supervisor of an array of international mobility training periods, namely 2 postdoctoral researchers (IACUBUS scholarship - Spain), 4 PhD students (2 IACUBUS scholarship - Spain; 1 CoNaCyt - Mexico; 1 SANDWICH - Brazil) and 1 MSc (Beca de Mobilidad Mixta de CoNaCyt - Mexico) as well as the supervision of 3 BSc volunteer researchers. In all my research activity resulted in the publication of 48 international peer-reviewed papers (63% Q1 & 22% Q2; 11 as a 1st author; 36 in the last 5 years; 811 citations & 16 h-index acc. Scopus 26Feb), 6 book chapters, 28 oral presentations and 47 panel presentations which contributed to the expansion of the body of knowledge linked to bioactives extraction/characterization and resulted in the invitation to be a lecturer in the functional foods module of an ERASMUS+ program and guest editor of a Byproducts special issue. I have also collaborated in scientific outreach activities as an organizing committee member of the 1st & 2nd Iberian Acorn Conference (speaker in the 1st) and as a speaker in the 1st National Marathon of Circular Economy Projects and the III University-Company Journeys. In the last 2 years, I have been a researcher in the Alchemy project (Compete2020 POCI-01-0247-FEDER-027578) where I have been involved in the establishment of a cell culture platform and implementing an array of different methodologies geared towards the characterization of byproduct extracts and biomolecules¿ safety and cosmeceutical potential