Since March 2017, Dr Tina Keller-Costa is a research scientist at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB), and since September 2020 an invited assistant professor at the Department of Bioengineering (DBE), at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon. She obtained her Master-degree in Biology from the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany, in 2009 and completed her European doctorate in Biology in July 2014 at the Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR) and the University of Évora, Portugal. She received the highest mentioning - excellent with distinction - and the faculty prize as - best student of the year - for her studies on animal-microbe symbioses from the University of Jena, and the - summa cum laude - mentioning for her doctorate on the chemical identification of fish pheromones from the University of Évora. Her Masters and doctoral studies were marked by several research stays abroad, at the Rijksunversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands), and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (Germany). From July 2014 to March 2016, Tina worked as a post-doc at CCMAR, investigating marine sponge and coral microbiomes using metagenomics and genomics combined with microbial cultivation. After the birth of her second child, in 2017, Tina joined iBB to seek for novel biotechnological appliances from symbiont communities. In 2019, she was awarded one of the competitive 6-year, individual research contracts (CEECIND/00788/2017) for junior investigators from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) to establish a research line on octocoral-microbe symbiosis. Tina is part of the Beneficial Microorganisms of Marine Organisms (BMMO) network, a collaboration joining marine scientists from 30 labs around the world to create a platform for knowledge exchange for microbiome therapy-assisted reef restoration actions. Tina authored 29 scientific publications (12 as first, 3 as last and 7 as corresponding author) encompassing research articles in international journals (25), conference proceedings (1), book chapters (1) and theses (2) and accomplished 19 publications independently from her PhD advisors. Her work has been published in multidisciplinary and specialized journals (e.g., Microbiome (IF 13.61), Current Biology (IF 10.83), Annual Reviews of Animal Biosciences (IF 8.92), Science of the total Environment (IF 7.96), Environmental Microbiology (IF 5.49). Her current H-index is 16 and her i10-index is 12 (GoogleScholar). She further authored/co-authored 30 oral (8 invited) and 38 poster contributions at scientific meetings. Tina has been heavily involved in the organization of two international conferences, including BAGECO15 where she chaired a session on Microbial adaptation, Functioning and Biodiversity in a Changing Planet and a roundtable on Microbiome Manipulation using Beneficial Microbes. She completed supervision of 8 Master theses (all graded excellent), 1 Bachelor thesis and 6 student internships. She currently (co)supervises 4 PhD students, 1 MSc and 2 BSc students. Tina is currently the PI of a FCT-funded research project focusing on novel chitinases from coral-associated bacteria and Co-PI of a Fundo Azul (DGPM) project on the sustainable production of bioactive metabolites from microbial symbionts of corals and sponges. She has been a team member in 3 more research projects, including 2 nationally and 1 internationally-funded (Volkswagen-foundation) project. Tina is active as a guest editor for the journal Marine Drugs and as reviewer for journals such as e.g., Science of the Total Environment, Frontiers in Microbiology, Microbial Ecology and The Journal of Experimental Biology. When she is not in the lab, Tina enjoys spending time with her two young daughters and practices horse riding.