Sofia Carvalho

Senior Scientist at iBET

Speaker

Sofia Baptista Carvalho is a senior researcher at the Animal Cell Technology Unit of iBET’s Health & Pharma Division since 2018. Sofia B. Carvalho finished her graduation and MSc in Biochemistry in 2009 and 2011 (FCUL), respectively, and in 2018 finished her PhD in Biotechnology from ITQB-NOVA. Sofia’s PhD research was in the area of Downstream processing strategies for Influenza VLPs as universal vaccine candidates as well as the development of analytical tools for process optimization and product characterization.

She did part of her PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Downstream Processing Lab (Germany), and at PALL Life Sciences (United Kingdom). In January 2018 she joined Genibet Biopharmaceuticals, a cGMP biopharmaceutical, to work as Project Manager of projects on viral process development and cGMP manufacturing. Later in 2018 she returned to the Animal Cell Technology Unit @iBET first as a research associate, and in 2019 as a senior researcher.

Sofia B. Carvalho's research interests are related to downstream processing and analytical tools of biopharmaceuticals, covering protein expression and purification, virus and VLP production (from cell expansion to product purification), Impact of operating variables on process performance and product quality, and the development of analytical tools for bioprocess understanding and biologics characterization (quantitative and qualitative). She participated as a team member in several publicly funded research projects (FCT and EC) and operates as a project manager in research services with the biopharmaceutical industry. Sofia B. Carvalho authored 18 manuscripts, 1 conference paper, and 1 book chapter, receiving a total of 435 citations (h-index 12). During her PhD, she tutored 2 MSc students (2 theses defended).

Sofia B. Carvalho received 2 awards and 8 grants and participated as author/co-author of more than 20 oral presentations and 30 poster communications.