Ricardo Branco
was born in Lisbon, in 1977. He graduates in Applied Chemistry (2001) at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and received his Ph.D. (2008) degree in Chemistry at University of Porto, working on computational and modelling studies on metalloproteins. In 2006, he joined the Institute of Technical Biochemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany as member of Collaborative Research Centers (SFB) 706 (2006-2007) and 716 (2007-2009). Since 2010-, he is postdoctoral research fellow at the UCIBIO-REQUIMTE, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, where he has developed his academic research focused on the protein de novo design and molecular modelling of biotechnological relevant systems, as senior researcher of the Biomolecular Engineering group. Actually, he is also the project coordinator of the international consortium: CHImerASE – Integrated Platform for de novo Design and Development of a Chimeric Enzyme for high-value chemicals (2014-2017), on the framework of the European Research Area in Industrial Biotechnology (ERA-IB-2) financed by the European Commission’s FP6 through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.