Eventos

On September 17, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the degree in Microbiology and The International Day of the Microorganism, the Faculty of Biotechnology will organize a webinar entitled: "Invisible but powerful: let’s talk about them to celebrate The International Day of the Microorganism!"

AGENDA

10:05am

Welcome Words
Paula Castro | Dean of Faculty of Biotechnology, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto)

10:10am

Presentation of the Keynote Speaker: Kenneth Timmis
Célia Manaia | Faculty of Biotechnology, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto)

10:15am

Keynote speech:
Literacy Initiative: bringing the excitement of microbes and their activities to children worldwide
Kenneth Timmis | Institute of Microbiology, Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany)

11:00am

Q&A

11:15am

Science Communication: Two winners of the Portuguese Society of Microbiology Contest

11:30am

Roundtable
Moderator: Nuno Teixeira Marcos | IPATIMUP
Maria João Amorim | Gulbenkian Institute for Science
Mafalda Gameiro | Journalist of the Public Portuguese television channel RTP
Tim Hogg | Faculty of Biotechnology, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto)

12:15pm

Closing Remarks
Freni Tavaria | Coordination of the Degree in Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto)

Please register here

Entre em https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/83e6a9c4e8b84d42b1300e925cfc0df2 no dia 24 de setembro de 2021 às 14h15 e assista à Biotalk (em inglês) de Cristina Silva.  A "entrada" é livre e gratuita, sem necessidade de inscrição.

Resumo

The role of food systems is to deliver food security and nutrition to all without compromising the future of the next generations. Food systems shall be profitable, benefit society, and positively or negatively impact the environment. The strategy for a sustainable food system has to include the whole food chain, from pre-production and production to distribution chains and final consumption. It can not be disconnected from the rapid population growth, urbanization, growing wealth and change in consumer patterns, globalization, climate change and scarcity of resources. These challenges require a multidisciplinary and holistic approach. Nevertheless, food processing and engineering are at the core of the needed competencies and developments. Innovations in processing and technologies contribute to higher quality products, reduce water and energy use, or minimize environmental impact. These can be introduced from raw materials, minimal processing, thermal and non-thermal technologies, food packaging, storage and distribution, consumption and food preparation, and by-products valorization and waste minimization.

Mathematical modelling and models have been developed to describe and understand the impact of food processes on food quality and safety, heat and mass transfer, allowing the study of alternative solutions or predicting possible scenarios. Therefore, present an excellent potential to contribute to sustainable development goals by predicting and minimizing processing time, optimizing energy and water use, predicting shelf life and minimizing food waste, among several other possibilities. Developed models are usually used under stationary conditions, not allowing the predictions of dynamic and more realistic conditions. Food companies have low to moderate knowledge of modelling tools and use them in a limited number of situations. Food processing and engineers are developing innovative and excellent approaches to tackle the food systems sustainability. The challenges are to transfer the know-how to the food industry sectors adequately. Moreover, broader developments are needed, involving multidisciplinary expert teams and increasing the dialogue among all the food professionals and stakeholders.

In the scope of CBQF celebration of its 30 years, CBQF is organizing a Cycle of Seminars about several topics related with different areas of research. The 6th Seminar titled “Amyris’ industrial biotechnology pipeline: How we launched 13 new bioproducts in 10 years“, will be held on September 30th at 5:00pm (9:00am in San Francisco, USA).

Brief Abstract
Biology is unparalleled in its molecular diversity and wide application space. There are however numerous challenges associated with realizing the full potential of this molecular diversity. Optimization of microbial production of any biological target requires repeated iterations of the design-build-test-analyze engineering cycle and the rate at which any team can execute the engineering cycle directly affects the time to market for any product. Similarly, the magnitude of strain improvement in each cycle impacts overall costs and development time. At Amyris, advanced tools for strain engineering, high throughput screening, analytics, and bioinformatics have been developed over the years to rapidly accelerate the engineering cycle and reduce the number of necessary iterations. With these capabilities, scientists at Amyris can efficiently optimize multiple biological pathways simultaneously. This presentation will cover details of the next-generation strain engineering and analysis platforms that enable Amyris scientists to rapidly iterate through multiple cycles of the strain optimization process, as well as the engineering of metabolic pathways to convert naïve yeast strains into commercial scale production hosts for various molecules.

Short biography

Kirsten R. Benjamin
Kirsten R. Benjamin, Ph.D. is a Vice President of R&D at Amyris Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area. Amyris is a successful pioneer in the high-technology renewable bio-based products sector, with a track record of quickly bringing novel fermentation products to market. Prior to joining Amyris 14 years ago, Kirsten received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in genetics at the University of California at San Francisco, and was a senior research fellow in systems biology at the Molecular Sciences Institute. At Amyris, she previously led the Biofene Program, and currently leads the 60-person Biology Department. The Biology Department includes Automated Strain Engineering, enzyme engineering, and microbial strain development. Over the years, Kirsten’s technical leadership and coordination between technology development in R&D and Manufacturing has aided successful technology transfer of over eight microbial strains and processes for large-scale manufacturing of multiple target molecules.

Michael Leavell
As Vice President of R&D and a member of the Research Leadership Team, Michael Leavell leads the Screening and Analytical Science Department (SCAN). SCAN is the ‘test’ portion of Amyris’ molecule pipeline and uses high-throughput screening, bench-scale fermentation, analytical chemistry, and ‘omics analysis to analyze millions of engineered microorganisms per year to assess their performance and identify areas for improvement. In addition to leading SCAN, he also led the development of Amyris’ zero-calorie sweetener, RebM, from project inception to first commercial production. He has more than 30 published scientific papers and patents. Prior to joining Amyris in 2006, Dr. Leavell received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and his B.S. in Chemistry from University of Colorado, Denver.

Este ano, mediante as restrições que nos confinam o corpo, temos o prazer de anunciar o nosso desconfinamento da mente.

Nesta realidade assombrada pelo vírus, da qual nenhum de nós conseguiu escapar, o toque tornou-se algo inalcançável e até esquecido. Apesar dos pesares, este congresso vai ser possível. Vamos mesmo encontrar-nos. Vamos mesmo poder falar sobre o que se está a passar cá dentro, de casa sim, mas, mais que isso, na nossa mente. Vamos mesmo poder falar com colegas de outras faculdades, de outros países e continentes, com quem partilhamos a língua portuguesa e partilharemos histórias, momentos, pensamentos e emoções!

Para a realização do nosso Congresso Internacional com Estudantes da Licenciatura em Psicologia (CIEL-PSI), propomos que durante os dias 21, 22 e 23 de outubro, mergulhemos numa viagem, todos juntos e mais perto que nunca, numa partilha incessante de conhecimento e valores humanos. Para a concretização desta partilha, pomos em cima da mesa o tema da saúde mental, um tema da atualidade, tanto durante esta pandemia, como mesmo, antes dela existir.

Enviamos-vos, por este meio, toda a nossa força, energia e esperança de que estejam a conseguir cuidar de vocês e dos vossos da melhor forma, atendendo à saúde mental, não esquecendo a física.

Esperamos-vos tão entusiasmados como nós, tão sedentos de travar conhecimento com vizinhos que, estando longe, estão mais perto do que alguma vez imaginamos!

Equipa CIEL

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