Mónica Bettencourt-Dias

Mónica Bettencourt-Dias (born 1974) is a Portuguese biochemist and cellular biologist, who is the head of the Cell Cycle Regulation research group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência. Her research involves cell cycle regulation, for which she has been recognized as the recipient of the Pfizer Award for Basic Research, the Keith Porter Prize from the American Society for Cell Biology and the Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award. She was also selected as a 2009 European Molecular Biology Organization Young Investigator Fellow and inducted as a member of the EMBO in 2015. Mónica Bettencourt-Dias was appointed Director of Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in November, 2017.

Biography Monica Bettencourt Carvalho was born in 1974 and grew up in Lisbon, Portugal. When she was little, she wanted to be an Astrophysicist. She began her tertiary studies in biochemistry there at the University of Lisbon. After completion of her undergraduate degree, she entered a PhD program at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência studying cell biology Her postdoctoral work focused on kinases, a type of enzyme critical to metabolism and cell signalling. She discovered that the kinase PLK4 regulates the number of centrosomes an organism develops. Her simultaneous studies were on scientific communication, to improve the way that scientists communicate with the public. and in 2009 was selected as a European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Young Investigator Fellow.

In 2010, she received a grant from the European Research Council to investigate abnormalities in centrioles and how the variance of their numbers Her research earned the Pfizer Award for Basic Research in 2012 and that same year, the Keith Porter Prize from the American Society for Cell Biology. She has authored numerous scientific papers and serves as editor for several scientific journals.

Bettencourt-Dias is also a key figure in the USA-PT Initiative against Cancer (UPIC), a partnership fostering trans-Atlantic collaboration. She serves on the selection committee for the initiative's International Portugal-USA Summer Course in Cancer Research, which facilitates scientist exchanges and training between the two nations.

Selected works