Maria Cecília Leão

Permanent Member

Class
Sciences

Section
5th Section | Biological Sciences

Election

23.04.2009 (Corresponding Member)
05.12.2019 (Permanent Member)

Contact

cleao [at] med.uminho.pt

Areas of Interest

Microbiology; Microbial Physiology; Cellular and Molecular Biology of Yeasts; Bioethics and Research Integrity; Medical Humanities

Hyperlinks
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1311-7884

Profile

Cecília Leão holds a degree in Biology from the University of Porto (1971) and a Ph.D. in Biology/Microbiology (1984) from the University of Minho (UMinho), with her doctoral research conducted at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Oeiras, under the supervision of Professor Nicolau van Uden.
She joined UMinho in 1976 and became a Full Professor in 1994, initially at the Department of Biology in the School of Sciences and, from 2002, in the School of Health Sciences, later renamed the School of Medicine in 2016.
President of the School of Sciences (1995-1998), the School of Health Sciences (2008-2016), and the School of Medicine (2016-2017).
Vice-Rector of UMinho (1998-2002), with responsibility for Research, Postgraduate Studies, and the establishment of the School of Health Sciences.
Her scientific activity focuses on microbiology and life and health sciences, with participation in and coordination of several R&D projects and networks, mainly funded by national and European external sources. She has supervised dozens of theses (doctoral and master’s or equivalent). She is the author or co-author of more than a hundred publications in international specialized journals, conferences, and book chapters, both nationally and internationally. She was a member of the Scientific Council for Life Sciences and Biotechnology of the FCT, the National Commission for the Evaluation of Biology Bachelor’s Degrees, Scientific Societies and their boards, both nationally and internationally, and served on the Editorial Board of the journals “Microbiology” and “FEMS Yeast Research”. She was awarded the Nicolau van Uden Prize by SPM (2013), the “A Nossa Terra – Science and Education / Braga” Award (2013), the Medal of Merit from the Municipality of Braga (2016), and the Scientific Merit Medal awarded by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education (2019).
She is the President of the UMinho Ethics Council (since 2022), the Ethics Committee for Life and Health Sciences Research (since 2018), and Coordinator of the “Alumni Medicine Chair – Professor Pinto Machado” at UMinho (since 2018).
On November 7, 2019, she became a Retired Full Professor, and in 2020 she was distinguished as an Emeritus Professor of UMinho.