Maria do Carmo Fonseca (born

Almada Almada () is a city and a municipality in Portugal, located on the southern margin of the Tagus River, on the opposite side of the river from Lisbon. The two cities are connected by the 25 de Abril Bridge. The population in 2011 was 174,030, in a ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, 9 August 1959) is a Portuguese

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts Scientific method, scientific research to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, ...

, full professor of Molecular Cell Biology and Onco-biology at the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...

Medical School and president of the ''Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes'' (Molecular Medicine Institute at the

). Her research is focused in pre-mRNA splicing and aims to contribute to the development of new diagnostic approaches and treatment strategies for related diseases.

Scientific trajectory

After studying Medicine at

, Maria do Carmo Fonseca completed her PhD in 1988. She broadened her studies in institutions such as the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. She then became a professor at the

. In 2011 she travelled to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to work as a visiting professor at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

for two years, and was Director of the Harvard Medical School-Portugal Program from 2009 to 2015.

Memberships and honours

She is member of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and th
Portuguese Academy of Medicine
and editor for the Journal of Cell Science and the RNA journal. She has received the Portuguese Pfizer Research Prize, the ''José Sala-Trepat'' Prize, the Iberian DuPont Science Award in 2002, the Gulbenkian Science Award in 2007, the Prémio Pessoa National Award in Arts, Science and Culture in 2010, and the ''Prémio D. Antónia Ferreira'' Portuguese award for Entrepreneurial women in 2013.

References

1959 births Living people Scientists from Lisbon Portuguese women scientists Molecular biologists Medical researchers Academic staff of the University of Lisbon {{improve categories, date=April 2021