Invited speakers
Professor @ Lusofona University
Catarina Pereira-Leite (CPL) is currently an Assistant Professor at School of Sciences and Health Technologies of Universidade Lusófona and she is an integrated member of CBIOS - Research Center for Biosciences & Health Technologies and a collaborator of LAQV, REQUIMTE. CPL received her PhD Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto and Chemistry Institute, University of São Paulo, under a cotutelle agreement, in 2017. Understanding biological barriers and finding nanosolutions to overcome them are the main research interests of CPL. Initially, her research was focused on understanding biological membranes for the development of more effective and safer anti-inflammatory drugs. More recently, her research line has also evolved towards the design of bioinspired nanosolutions for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and nutraceutical applications. This research line has recently been awarded with a FCT funded Exploratory Project intitled “Bioinspired materials in nanosolutions to tackle atopic dermatitis”. CPL has also been involved in the supervision of PhD, MSc, and BSc students and in teaching activities for graduation programs and advanced training.
Professor @ Coimbra University
Amália S. Jurado received her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra, and as Professor in the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Coimbra, she has been responsible for teaching undergraduate courses in Biochemistry, Biology and Toxicology, as well as a course in Functional Lipidomics of the Master Degree in Biochemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology. She supervised six Ph.D. students and one post-doc student, holding FCT fellowships.
As leader of the Membrane Toxicity group at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC), from 2002 to 2011, her work was focused on the development of in vitro assays for toxicity assessment alternative to animal use; molecular mechanisms underlying the cytotoxic effects of xenobiotics from pharmaceutics to agrochemicals and the effects of diet lipid manipulation on the susceptibility of mitochondria to chemotherapeutics. She has participated in the Organization Committee of the International Course on Toxicology Survival or Death as a Matter of Fat, in 2010, and edited the book A Toxicological/Pharmacological Approach to the Chemico-Biological Interactions at the Membrane Level, Research Signpost, Transworld Research Network, 2013. As responsible for the research line in Membrane Structure and Dynamics in the group of Vectors and Gene Therapy at the CNC, she has been Principal Investigator in the project Interaction of Lipoplexes with Cellular Membranes: A Biophysical Approach to Gene Delivery, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), from 2009 to 2013. As principal investigator in the group of Therapies Targeting Brain Diseases: Genomic and Lipidomic Approaches at the CNC, she has recently participated in the project Tackling Cancer Stem Cells: a Challenge and an Opportunity to Advance in Anti-cancer Therapy (CANCEL-STEM, PAC), coordinated by the IPATIMUP, with the development of a Work Package regarding i. a lipid membrane anti-cancer therapy, based on the delivery of small interference RNAs targeting key-enzymes of lipid metabolism in glioblastoma (GB) cells and ii. identification of miRNAs abnormally expressed in GB and their modulation in order to sensitize stem and differentiated GB cells to new generation chemotherapeutics.
She has authored about 80 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters and has over 100 presentations in National and International Scientific Meetings.
Having established joint collaborations with several national and international researchers, her long-term goal is to generate a core team at CNC devoted to advancing the application of lipidomics in the areas of human health and disease.
Head of the Bioimaging facility @ FFUL
Liana C. Silva is an Assistant Professor with Habilitation and head of the Bioimaging Facility at the Faculty of Pharmacy from the University of Lisbon (FF/UL), Portugal. She graduated in Biochemistry in 2001 at the Faculty of Sciences/UL, Portugal, and obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry (Molecular Biophysics) in 2006 at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST-UL). She developed her post-doctoral project at the interface between molecular biophysics and biochemistry as a research fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS), Israel and at the IST (2007-2009). In 2009, she was awarded a Ciência 2008 Research position followed by an FCT Investigator research position (2014) to set her research team focused on Molecular & Cellular Biophysics at the Faculty of Pharmacy/UL. LC Silva has an interdisciplinary background in biochemistry and cell biology, quantitative photophysics and molecular biophysics. Her multidisciplinary research, bridging membrane biophysics and cell biology, aims to understand the role of membrane biophysical properties in cell function and pathology, focusing on membrane lipids and their interplay in biological membranes. She takes advantage of multiple biophysical methodologies, including fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy to investigate membrane organization and function, and to provide the molecular tools to develop improved therapeutics. During her career, LC Silva mentored more than 20 students and researchers, awarded numerous grants and fellowships, and secured competitive funding as PI and as team member of national and international collaborative projects. She is co-author of 9 book chapters and 49 ISI papers, editor of 2 special issues, editorial board member in 4 international journals and evaluator of international projects. She has been invited speaker in more than 40 conferences of excellence, main organizer of recognized international conferences, and the founder of the Sphingolipid Biology platform (www.sphingolipidbiology.com). She has also been involved in various teaching activities and implemented the Pharmaceutical Biophysics PhD course at the i3DU doctoral program from the FF/UL.
Professor @ Coimbra University
Luís Loura is a membrane biophysicist. Biological membranes and their models have beenthe subject of virtually all his research, since the Ph.D. (concluded in 1999). Early
on, he used fluorescence techniques (FRET, quenching, anisotropy, time-resolved
fluorescence in general) to address relevant problems in membrane biophysics, such as membrane lipid distribution and nanoscale organization, lipid-peptide, lipid-protein and lipid-DNA interactions. The Ph.D. work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Manuel Prieto, in IST (then part of Technical University of Lisbon, now University of Lisbon), who remains as a regular collaborator to this day, mainly helping with design of research and data analysis involving FRET, time-resolved fluorescence quenching and anisotropy. By the mid-2000s, Luís Lora was employed in the Department of Chemistry at University of Évora, and started working on molecular dynamics simulations of the behaviour of fluorescence membrane probes and membrane-active peptides, interacting with model membranes. After taking up a position of Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Coimbra in 2007, he has been a member of the Coimbra Chemistry Centre since 2010, working on the simulation of the interaction of biologically relevant solutes (drugs and related molecules) with model membranes. He co-authored ~80 articles in international peer-reviewed journals (with ~1900 citations, self-citations excluded, and h index = 29), ~15 book chapters, and a membrane biophysics textbook in Portuguese language. Overall, Luís Loura has supervised or co-supervised 5 Ph.D. and 20 Ms.C. theses. He has been the principal investigator of two FCT projects, as well as of competitive CPU-time computational projects by PRACE (EU) and RNCA (FCT/PT). Luís Loura has been involved in teaching since the undergraduate days, and taught courses in various areas of Chemistry (Physical, Computational, Theoretical, Analytical, Inorganic, Organic, Water and Food Chemistry) and Mathematics (Calculus, Numerical Methods, Programming) in three different Portuguese universities.
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Head of SIRIUS beamline @ Soleil Synchontron
Philippe FONTAINE is the head scientist in charge of the SIRIUS beamline at the French Synchrotron radiation facility, SOLEIL (Saint Aubin, France) and invited researcher at the Institut des NanoSciences de Paris (INSP, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France).
After an engineering degree in electronics and computing in parallel to a master in material science, he obtained a PhD prepared at the Institut Curie (Paris, France), completed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Service de Physique de L’Etat Condensé (SPEC, CEA Saclay France). As research assistant at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), he became scientist at the LURE synchrotron on the beamline dedicated to diffraction on organized molecular layers. This was the starting point for the proposal of a beamline dedicated to soft interfaces and organized molecular systems on the SOLEIL synchrotron, SIRIUS that is in operation and has already hosted 30-research groups worldwide. His personal research interest is the understanding of relationship between the structure mostly determined by x-ray techniques and the interactions involved in molecular assemblies. His current research activities concerns nano-structuration in semi-fluorinated alkanes monolayers, development of the surface x-ray radiolysis technique to form metal-organic systems and ionic liquids at interfaces.
Head of MIRAS beamline @ Alba Synchontron
Ibraheem Yousef is the responsible of infrared microspectroscopy beamline MIRAS at ALBA synchrotron light source in Barcelona (Spain). He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris with doctoral research performed at SOLEIL synchrotron. Since 2011 until 2014, he has been working as a responsible of the Infrared microspectroscopy beamline at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan. His research concerns synchrotron-based Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy and imaging.
He developed several research projects related to applications of synchrotron infrared microspectroscopy. He has participated in projects dealing with imaging biochemical composition inside individual healthy and tumoral cells, study of human tissues and bacterial identification. He has been also involved in other research directions as high-pressure studies, batteries and energy related material, environmental science and Far-IR microspectroscopy.
Currently, his major responsibilities included working as a beamline scientist and responsible of the infrared beamline. His duty is to manage the upgrade of the infrared beamline experimental setups and developing the research scientific community in different fields of infrared microspectroscopy, establishing strong collaborations at a national and international levels.
Dr. Yousef produced important contributions published in refereed journals total of 45 articles and presented at international conferences.
Professor @ Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval
Christian Salesse obtained a BSc in medical biology/biophysics and then a MSc and a PhD in biophysics under the supervision of professor Roger M. Leblanc at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). Afterwards, he was a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz (Germany) under the supervision of professor Helmut Ringsdorf.
He then became an assistant professor at UQTR in 1990 and full professor in 1998. He moved to the Université Laval in 2002 as the head of the ophthalmology research unit at the Centre de recherche du CHUL as well as the head of research of the department of ophthalmology. He was a Junior 1, Junior 2, Senior and National research fellow of the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec between 1990 and 2006. He moved to the Hôpital du St-Sacrement of the Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec-Université Laval in 2011 as the head of the theme Santé de la vision until 2018. He was an invited professor for various periods of time at several universities (Montpellier, Rennes and Bordeaux in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Changchun in China).
Until now, he supervised 66 students at the MSc, PhD and postdoctoral level. His involvement in the mentorship of newly hired professors was recognized in 2011 when he was awarded the price Louis Larochelle.