Raquel Silva

BSc in Applied Biology, University of Minho | MSc Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioentrepreneurship in Plants, University of Minho | Pos-Graduated in Quality Control, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto

Born in Madeira and living in Braga, I initiated my academic path at University of Minho, where I completed my BSc degree in Applied Biology (2015). Having developed particular interest on the medicinal uses of plant bioactive compounds, I enrolled the master course in Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioentrepreneurship in Plants, in University of Minho (2018). In 2017 I took part of the ERASMUS+ program and initiated my master thesis in the Department of Biosciences of Università degli Studi di Milano. During this project I had the opportunity to improve techniques including in vitro culture, genetics and transcript/protein analyses and also computational/statistics among other molecular and biochemical approaches. I initiated my professional path at CIIMAR in 2019 where I integrated LEGE-CC team mainly responsible for maintenance on a molecular level with the identification of strains. Currently I work as the Curator of the Blue Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology Culture Collection (LEGE-CC). My job within the culture collection is to manage the team and assure the maintenance of the collection, legislation related issues such as Nagoya Protocol, management of LEGE-CC database and website. I also contribute to increase the biodiversity by isolating and identifying new strains of microalgae, mainly cyanobacteria. I am also a collaborator in the Consortium of Portuguese BlueBiobank.