Maria Arménia Carrondo takes office as FCT President

Since 1998, Maria Arménia Carrondo has been a Full Professor at the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology (ITQB) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 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.

She 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. She was a lecturer at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), where she was a member of the Board of Directors and was awarded the title of Aggregate Professor in 1989. She created and led the research group in Chemical Crystallography of organic, inorganic and organometallic molecules at the IST Structural Chemistry Center. She is the co-author of 154 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals with 4093 citations and an h-index of 38.

Maria Arménia Carrondo has extensive experience in the postgraduate area, having supervised 14 PhD students and 12 postdoctoral students. She has taken on responsibilities in the editorial area, having been editor of the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry since 2001.

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

He has 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 for the European Research Council (ERC), the Academy of Finland and evaluation committees for proposals for European synchrotrons, namely the ESRF, EMBL-Hamburg and the Swiss Light Source (SLS).

In 2015, she was nominated as one of the 20 women distinguished at the "Women in Science" exhibition organized by the Ciência Viva Agency. She was 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). She has been a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2000.