Maria de Lurdes dos Santos Cristiano

Scientific Research Fellowship (BIPD) 111/2026 is a postdoctoral research opportunity in the ResilCrops project, a cross-border R&D initiative focused on Harnessing Circular Economy to Improve Crop Resilience in the Atlantic Area . The fellowship is hosted at the Centre for Marine Sciences (CCMar) , within the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Algarve , and is embedded in the Laboratory of Marine Microbial Ecology and Biotechnology . The selected fellow will contribute to experimental work at the interface of marine microbiology , microbial ecology , and plant-microbe interactions . The project involves collecting marine macrophytes and isolating microorganisms from them, including oomycetes, fungi, and bacteria . The research also includes cultivating marine bacteria to explore their production of bioactive compounds , identifying microorganisms using molecular approaches, and running pathogenicity assays on plants with selected bacterial strains to test antagonistic activity against pathogens. The role is situated in a research environment that combines laboratory and project-based scientific work, with outputs contributing to reports and scientific articles. The work is carried out under the direct scientific supervision of Dr. Aschwin Hillebrand Engelen , within a team at CCMar that also includes the broader evaluation and supervisory context of the University of Algarve. The fellowship is explicitly framed as a postdoctoral research grant supporting scientific research activities in biological sciences.