Dr Maria Barbosa holds a MSc in Food engineering obtained at the Catholic University, Porto, Portugal in 1997 and a PhD in Bioprocess Engineering obtained at Wageningen University, The Netherlands in 2003, on the scale up and optimization of photobioreactors for microalgae production. She has worked at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland on metabolic engineering and at EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation), Germany as a program manager.

Dr Maria Barbosa is presently Director of AlgaePARC (Algae Production and Research Center – www.AlgaePARC.com) and Research Manager microalgae at the Research Institute Food & Biobased Research Wageningen University and Research Centre.  She is responsible for acquisition and coordination of scientific and business projects in the field of microalgae biotechnology.  In the last 4 years Dr Maria Barbosa has set up a program of 11 M€  in her own institution. She presently coordinates two large collaborative European projects on microalgae for biopolymers and biofuels with a total budget of 18 M€, supervises 6 PhD students and a group of 18 people. She has published 21 scientific articles in high ranked journals including Science and two reports on the Technical and economical analysis of microalgae and seaweeds as feedstock for biofuels and on Microalgae Market Analysis: Aquaculture, omega 3 oils, carotenoids, both in 2007.

Dr Maria Barbosa is a member of  the editorial board of the journal Algal Research,  member of the scientific Committee of the symposium on Biorefinery for Food AND Fuel (BFF2013), Wageningen, The Netherlands, 8-10 April 2013, Member of Microalgae European Scientific Mission on Microalgae Biorefineries in Chile, 3-8 September 2012., Member of the European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTP): Algae Task Force.

Her scientific interests are on microalgae cultivation and biorefinery and on the translation of fundamental research to applied settings.