Isabel Soares Silva graduated in Applied Biology at Minho University and later obtained a specialisation in Molecular Genetics. She finished her Ph.D. in 2006 in the field of Yeast Molecular Biology and developed her experimental work under the supervision of Prof. Margarida Casal, in collaboration with Profs KD. Entian (UGoete-Germany), P. Morsomme (UCLouvain-Belgium), A. Goffeau (UCLouvain-Belgium) and G. Diallinas (UAthens-Greece). In her subsequent PostDoc, she specialized in the field of structure-function studies of permeases, working at University of Minho and in the G. Diallinas lab at Athens University, Greece. She then joined the Nephrology R&D Unit (Faculty of Medicine, UPorto). As a research assistant, she implemented a new research field that addressed catheter-related infections in dialysis patients, besides actively collaborating in ongoing group projects. Later, at INEB/I3S (UPorto), she focused on the characterisation of the microbiome of Chronic Kidney Disease patients. Since October 2016, she has expanded her work in the field of carboxylate transporters as part of the project EcoAgriFood at the Center for Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA) UMinho. At CBMA, she is presently interested in the development of bio-based solutions addressing the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, mainly through the identification and optimization of carboxylic acid transporters to improve the efficiency of biorefineries, increase the range of currently available bio-based products, and promote the circular economy in the Industrial Biotechnology sector. She also conducts research in the interface of computer sciences and transporter proteins, merging bioinformatics, structure prediction tools, molecular docking, genomic analysis, and data mining, to develop and implement new approaches to analyse and identify novel transporter proteins. With her expertise in structural biology, she contributed to unravelling the structural features of the AceTr transporter family and the pioneer functional expression of a bacterial transporter in eukaryotic cells. Her recent work on the citrate exporter from Aspergillus niger, an industrial workhorse for citrate production, outlined the key role of specific amino acid residues for citrate export. She also developed a bioinformatic and phenotypic pipeline which allowed the identification of 16 new carboxylate transporters from the yeast Cyberlindnera jadinii. In these last 5 years, she was able to translate the research outputs into two patent applications, 1 International (PCT/IB2018/057572) and 1 European (EP22166183.8). She has authored 36 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, 1 book chapter and 20 conference proceedings. She attended 20 national and 19 international meetings, received 6 accommodation/travel grants, and authored 60 oral presentations and 90 posters. She participated in 16 research projects (PI of 4; Co-PI of 1; Task leader of 1) and has been engaged in the organization of national and international meetings. In addition to the supervision of 4 Ph.D. students and 1 Post-Doc, she also supervised 13 MSc, 3 Erasmus, and 19 BSc students. She was a guest editor of a special issue on Fungi Nutrient Transportation in the Journal of Fungi (10 published papers). She also participated in international and national scientific committees of Ph.D. and MSc thesis. She revised papers for 22 journals. She is regularly invited to present lectures and teach in advanced post-graduation courses and MSc coursed. She also teaches classes to graduate and undergraduate students.