Maria João Romão got her PhD in Chemistry in 1989 at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon and was a AvHumboldt post-doctoral fellow working with the Nobel Laureate Prof. Robert Huber at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany. She got her Habilitation in Biochemistry at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, NOVA University of Lisbon, in 2001 and, since 2012, she is Full Professor of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at the same University. She is the founding Director of the Research Unit on Applied Biomolecular Sciences, UCIBIO (from 2014 to 2023). Her research group on Macromolecular Crystallography (http://sites.fct.unl.pt/xtal) has several areas of interest focused on molybdoenzymes (aldehyde oxidases, arsenite oxidases and formate dehydrogenases) and their enzymatic mechanisms, glycan-binding and cellulosomal proteins and methods for protein crystallization. She has supervised/co-supervised 17 PhD students and is the Principal investigator in 7 project(s) and Researcher in 25 project(s). Since 2022 she is the local coordinator of the Horizon Europe ERA-Chair project CryoEM@NOVA for the implementation of the first CryoEM lab at NOVA. In the period 2012-2022 she was the Portuguese Delegate to the European Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (ESRF) and the Portuguese observer at the Scientific Advisory Committee of ALBA Synchrotron. Since 2017 is Co-Editor of Acta Crystallographica F. She is co-author of over 160 SCI publications, 10 book chapters and her work has received over 6600 citations, h-index= 45