Sandra Antónia Cordeiro Figueiredo

Experiência

Sandra Figueiredo (SF) holds a Master’s degree in Pharmacy and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmaceutical Chemistry) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal (2017). In 2016, she was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain. In 2018, she joined CIIMAR, University of Porto, as a postdoctoral researcher funded by an ERC grant, where she investigated marine natural products, focusing on cyanobacterial chemistry, enzymology, metabolomics, and biosynthetic potential.

SF was appointed Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra, in 2021, and at the University of La Rochelle, France, in 2023. In 2021, she obtained an FCT exploratory project on β-oxidation in cyanobacteria and a six-year FCT Scientific Employment Contract. In 2023, she was awarded a CIIMAR SEED project (CYanoCYclic) on cyanobacterial cyclic depsipeptides. In 2025, she became PI of a FEDER-funded NORTE 2030 project, aimed at strengthening research capacity in Marine Biotechnology. In the same year, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra.

Her research focuses on cyanobacterial natural products, metabolomics, pharmaceutical chemistry, and drug discovery. She has contributed to several competitive research projects, including as co-PI of two FCT-funded projects. Her publications include first-author papers in Angewandte Chemie and co-authored articles in Nature Communications and Nature Chemical Biology.