M. Alice Pinto earned a PhD in entomology from Texas A&M University, USA, a MSc in Integrated Pest Management from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and a BSc in Forest Engineering from Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal. She is a Full Professor (Professora Coordenadora) in Insituto Politécnico de Bragança and a researcher in Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO), Portugal. Her research has focused on dissecting genetic diversity patterns, and underlying evolutionary forces, using Apis mellifera as the model organism. She has used a diverse array of molecular markers and tools, ranging from PCR-RFLP, microsatellites, SNPs, to whole genomes. She has developed novel SNP-based assays designed from whole genomes, which are currently employed by several laboratories in Europe to monitor honey bee conservation programs. Recently, she was awarded with two projects financed by the European Union (MEDIBEES-2011- PRIMA S1 2020 FARMING SYSTEMS and BETTER-B-HORIZON-CL6-2022-BIODIV-02-03-two-stage ) to sequence whole genomes of European, north African, and Middle Eastern honey bee subspecies to uncover the genetic basis of adaptation to climate and to develop a tool for subspecies delineation. In the framework of different projects, recently, she expanded her main focus from the genetics of bees to the genetics of bee predators (V. velutina; POSEUR projects), bee viruses (BEEHAPPY, FCT project), and bee-collected pollen for environmental monitoring purposes (INSIGNIA-BEE and INSIGNIA-EU, EU projects). In the framework of the INSIGNIA projects, she developed, validated and tested a high throughput sequencing (HTS) metabarcoding protocol based on the ITS2 barcode for botanical identification of pollen mixtures collected in bee traps by Citizen Scientists across the 27 EU Member States. The INSIGNIA projects promise to be the benchmark for bio-monitoring of the environmental quality in the EU. During the first covid-19 lock down, in March 2020, Pinto set up a laboratory in CIMO premises for covid-19 testing via RT-PCR and led a team of over 30 volunteers. The covid-19 laboratory run over 60 000 tests. She has participated in 37 national and international research projects (3 as PI, 5 as co-PI, and 9 as IPB leader, 20 as a researcher), presented over 250 communications in international and national scientific and beekeeping conferences/workshops (33 as invited speaker), edited two books, co-authored 66 papers (most of them as a last/corresponding author) in peer-reviewed journals, 39 popular papers, 11 papers in conference proceedings, and 4 book chapters. She collaborated in the development of 4 registered software (HONEYCOMBMARKER®, DEEPBEE®, ASIANHORNETS®, DEEPWINGS®). She has supervised 20 BSc, 18 MSc (4 ongoing), 9 PhD students (6 ongoing), and 4 post-docs (2 ongoing), and 12 mobility students. She has worked as project evaluator for several international funding agencies (e.g. NERC, BBSRC, NCN, AgreenSkills, Eva Crane Foundation) and as a reviewer for over 15 scientific journals. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Scientific Reports, Insects, and Frontiers in Bee Science. She is also a member of the Direction Board of Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO), the Portuguese Society for Evolutionary Biology, the Portuguese Society of Forest Sciences, and a member of the Scientific Board of SICAMM (International Association for the Protection of A.m. mellifera).