Mariana Sottomayor has a PhD degree in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, with part of the PhD project performed at the University of Toronto, Canada, and most of it at the University of Murcia, Spain. She is Professora Auxiliar at FCUP and she coordinates the group PLANTBIO at CIBIO – Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources. Her main research interest is the anticancer alkaloid pathway of the plant Catharanthus roseus.