Profile

Isabel Sá-Correia is a Distinguished Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and Emerita Professor at the University of Lisbon, where she founded and led the Biological Sciences area. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering (IST, 1975), a PhD in the field of Yeast Physiology carried out at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science, and postdoctoral studies in Bacterial Molecular Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as a Fulbright Scholar.

She served on the General Council of ULisboa (2013–2022), the IST Scientific Council, and is a member of the IST Ethics Committee. She coordinated the PhD program in Biotechnology and Biosciences and several master’s programs and directed the FCT doctoral program BIOTECnico.

Her research focuses on Molecular and Cellular Microbiology, Functional and Comparative Genomics, and Microbial Diversity, with relevance to Microbial Biotechnology and Human Health. She appears in Stanford University’s lists of the world’s most cited scientists. She coordinated the molecular biology component of the open-access YEASTRACT/YEASTRACT+ platform https://yeastract-plus.org/.

She led multiple national and EU research projects, supervised 35 PhD and 65 Master’s theses, and mentored 18 post-doctoral researchers.

Former President of the Portuguese Society of Microbiology (SPM) and national delegate to the FEMS-Federation of European Microbiological Societies Council (2009–2020), she co-founded (2017) the International Microorganism Day and led its international expansion. A corresponding member (2015) and full member (2023) of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, she represented the Science Class on its International Relations Committee and in EASAC- – the European Academies Science Advisory Council -. She is the Academy’s Secretary-General for 2025–2027.

Her distinctions include the FCT Excellence Stimulus (2004), UTL–Santander Totta Scientific Award (2008), the N. van Uden Career Award in Microbiology (2021), and the FEMS Special Merit Award (2022).