An astrobiologist and international expert on the origin and evolution of life in the universe, she is Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), where she created Portugal’s first astrobiology and chemistry of the cosmos research department. She is also Co-Director of the MIT-Portugal programme, a partnership between IST and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a PhD from the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, she has dedicated herself to studying the potential contribution of organic compounds present in meteorites and comets to the origin of life on Earth and searching for signs of life on Mars, the moons of the Solar System and extrasolar planets. She has participated in several space missions as a NASA Guest Scientist (2005/6), taught at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France and was Researcher at Imperial College in London between 2009 and 2017. She currently collaborates on various European Space Agency missions and is part of the national science team for the Japanese Hayabusa2 space mission. A member of the Committee of the Astrobiology Society of Great Britain and national representative of the Executive Committee of the European Astrobiology Association, she was appointed an Officer of the Military Order of Sant'Iago de Espada (2015).

Last updated: November 2019