Mónica Bettencourt-Dias

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 and completed her studies at University College London, earning a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology in 2001. Her research focused on the regeneration of heart cells in salamanders.

She enrolled at the University of Cambridge and simultaneously at Birkbeck College in London for her postdoctoral research. 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.

After completing her studies, Bettencourt returned to Portugal in 2006 and opened a laboratory at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência to continue her work on "centriole formation, evolution and their physiological function". In 2007, she was awarded the Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award 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 or errors in cell division can lead to the development of tumors or infertility. 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. In 2015, Bettencourt was inducted as a full member to the EMBO.