M Agustina Domínguez-Martín

University of Córdoba, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

M Agustina Domínguez-Martín is a researcher at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Córdoba (UCO, Spain). She graduated in Biochemistry at UCO (2008). She obtained her PhD in the same University in 2014, where she studied the regulation of the C/N metabolism in marine picocyanobacteria under the supervision of Prof. Jose Manuel García-Fernández and Prof. Jesús Díez. During her doctoral studies, she did part of her experiments at the University of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany and the University of Liverpool (UK). Then, she focused on studying mechanisms of photoprotection in cyanobacteria and did a postdoctoral stay at the University of Michigan (MSU, USA) and the Lawrence National Berkeley Laboratory (LBNL, USA) under the supervision of Prof. Cheryl A Kerfeld. During her postdoctoral visit, she was awarded the Global Marie-Sklowdoska Curie Fellowship, which allows her to return to UCO and continue her studies on photoprotection in marine cyanobacteria.

Sara B. Pereira

University of Porto

Sara B. Pereira is a researcher at the Bioengineering and Synthetic Microbiology group of i3S/IBMC - Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Porto. She graduated in Biology by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto in 2005 and obtained her PhD degree from the same University in 2010, having performed part of the experimental work in the Universities of Florence and Sheffield. During her PhD, she focused on the cyanobacterial extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and the applications of these polymers for heavy metals bioremediation. Nowadays, she is mainly devoted to elucidate of the biosynthetic pathways of EPS in cyanobacteria to increase the production of (tailored) polymers with relevant properties for biotechnological and biomedical applications.

Pedro Leão

University of Porto

Pedro Leão heads the Cyanobacterial Natural Products Team at CIIMAR (University of Porto, Portugal). He graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Porto (2005) and obtained his PhD in the same University in 2010 where he studied the chemical ecology of cyanobacteria under the supervision of Vitor Vasconcelos. He then focused on the discovery, chemistry and biosynthesis of new natural products from marine cyanobacteria, and did postdoctoral stays at Scripps Oceanography (with Bill Gerwick) and Harvard University (with Emily Balskus). In 2018 he established his lab at CIIMAR under an ERC Starting Grant. His research is focused on the discovery of novel natural products and unusual enzymes.