Dr Tina Keller-Costa is a research scientist at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB) and invited assistant professor at the Department of Bioengineering (DBE), at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon (UL), whereby her teaching activities were honoured 3x with IST¿s Excellent Teacher Award. She obtained her Masters-degree in Biology from the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena (FSU), Germany, in 2009 and completed her European Doctorate in Biology in 2014 at the Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR) and the University of Évora (UE), 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 in freshwater habitats from the FSU, and the Summa Cum Laude mentioning for her doctorate on the chemical identification of fish pheromones from the UE. Her master¿s and doctoral studies were marked by research stays at internationally recognized institutions, such as the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, NL, and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, DE. From 2014 to 2016, Tina worked as post-doctoral researcher at CCMAR, investigating marine sponge and coral microbiomes using metagenomics and genomics combined with microbial cultivation. This period included a research stay at the Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the FSU. After the birth of her second child, Tina joined iBB in 2017, to seek for novel biotechnological appliances from marine symbiotic communities. In 2019, Tina was awarded one of the highly competitive 6-year, individual research contracts (CEECIND) for junior investigators from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), to develop her own research line on octocoral-microbe symbiosis and the sustainable exploitation of secondary metabolites from octocoral-associated microbes. In summer 2023, she was an invited visiting scientist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Saudi Arabia), setting up aquarium experiments to study climate change effects in octocorals and their microbiomes. Tina authored 43 scientific publications (12 as first, 6 as last and 11 as corresponding author), encompassing research articles in international journals (39), conference proceedings (1), book chapters (1) and theses (2) and accomplished 29 publications independently from her PhD and MSc advisors. The work was published in high-rank, multidisciplinary and specialized Journals (e.g., Nature Microbiology, Microbiome, Annual Reviews of Animal Biosciences, Current Biology, Science of the Total Environment). She further authored/co-authored 39 oral (11 invited) and 65 poster contributions at scientific conferences. Tina currently supervises/co-supervises 3 PhD students and 5 MSc students, while 2 PhD students and over 20 MSc, BSc and student internships have successfully completed their training under her supervision. Tina is part of the 1.5M€ PRR-project Blue Bioeconomy Pact, active on work package WP5 Vertical Algae and co-leading WP9 Portuguese Blue Biobank at IST. She was recently PI of a 50K€ research project financed by the FCT on the production of recombinant chitinases from yet unculturable coral symbionts, Co-PI of a national 178K€ funded project from the Fundo Azul program of DGPM, focusing on antimicrobial metabolites from sponge and coral symbionts, and team member in 3 more research projects, including 1 internationally funded (Volkswagen-foundation) project. Tina served as guest editor for Marine Drugs, is review-editor for Frontiers in Microbiology, and regularly engages in public outreach and science communication. She is active member of the International Coral Reef Society, the Beneficial Microorganisms of Marine Organisms network, and the Portuguese Society for Microbiology, serving on the scientific council of Cartoons de Microbiologia. She is also elected member of the Seminar of the Young Scientists of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon.