Maria Armênia Carrondo takes office as President of the FCT

Maria Armênia Carrondo has been a Full Professor at the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology (ITQB) at Universidade Nova de Lisboa since 1998, where she coordinates the Macromolecular Crystallography Unit and the Structural Genomics research group. She was Deputy Director of ITQB and Vice-Rector of Universidade Nova de Lisboa for Scientific Research, Planning and Institutional Development.

He graduated in Chemical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and obtained a PhD in Chemical Crystallography from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. He was a professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), where he served as a member of the Board of Directors and obtained the title of associate professor in 1989. He created and led the research group in Chemical Crystallography of organic, inorganic and organometallic molecules at the Center for Structural Chemistry at IST. She has co-authored 154 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals that have 4,093 citations and an h-index of 38.

Maria Armênia Carrondo has extensive experience in the postgraduate field, having supervised 14 doctoral students and 12 postdoctoral students. She has assumed responsibilities in the editorial area, being editor of the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry since 2001.

Organized the process of Portugal's accession to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). He coordinated Portugal's accession to INSTRUCT, a European project of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). He coordinated studies on UNL's scientific production and led the university's participation in projects within the scope of the European Higher Education Area, notably U-Map and U-Multirank.

He participated in the evaluation of several international scientific institutions, namely the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg (Germany) and the Max-IV Laboratory in Lund (Sweden). He was a member of scientific evaluation committees of the European Research Council (ERC), the Academy of Finland and of proposal evaluation committees for European synchrotrons, namely ESRF, EMBL-Hamburg and Swiss Light Source (SLS).

In 2015, she was nominated to be part of the group of 20 women distinguished in the “Women in Science” Exhibition organized by Agência Ciência Viva. She has been awarded several prizes, including the Câmara Pestana Prize awarded by the Câmara Pestana Institute of the University of Lisbon and the “Stimulus to Excellence” Prize awarded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. She was awarded “ Medals of Honor” by the municipalities of Oeiras and Vila Nova de Famalicão and the European Medal in Bio-Inorganic Chemistry (EUROBIC Medal). It has been a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2000.