Rui Oliveira’s research focus lies within the field of Natural Sciences, with an emphasis on Biological Sciences. He has collaborated with 246 fellow researchers from 10 research groups in Portugal, Northern Ireland, Slovakia, Spain and France, with whom he has co-authored scientific papers. His research interests are plant and microalgae and macroalgae extracts’ bioactivities such as antioxidant, antigenotoxic, neuroprotective or antimicrobial. His research work involves plant and algae extracts in investigations on chemical characterisation and assessment of biological activities using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, human cell lines, Danio rerio and Caenorhabditis elegans as experimental models. The assays involve techniques like microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. In his research activity, Rui Oliveira has identified several plants, which extracts contain valuable compounds with remarkable antioxidant and antigenotoxic activities with an enormous potential of application in nutraceutics as ingredients of functional foods that prevent from stress imposed by food contaminants. In addition, some of the plant and microalgae extracts are also promising for cosmetic applications due to their remarkable antioxidant properties. In another line of onvestigation, Rui Oliveira has identified macroalgae with potential neuroprotective applications due to their antioxidant and protein antiaggregant properties like synuclein and huntingtin. Finally, in a different research line, several herbs were identified with notable antifungal properties against phytopathogenic fungi. Traditional fungicides are widely employed in crop protection and are one of the most commonly used types of pesticides. They have significant environmental impacts, as they tend to build up in the soil and can seep into rivers, negatively affecting non-target organisms that play beneficial roles in the ecosystem.In addition, their efficient, one-target mode of action leads to the selection of resistant strains. Unlike convencional fungicides, natural products like plant extracts, are biodegradable and have a multi-target mode of action, therefore, potentially, they do not pose the problems of conventional fungicides. Extracts from herbs identified in his research displayed remarkable inhibitory activities against phytopathogens that affect very important crops in Portugal and in the Mediterranean basin: the cork producing tree Quercus suber, vitis vinifera, the chestnut producing tree Castanea sativa an many fruit trees. Rui Oliveira has received one award for teaching innovation at the University of Minho and a fellowship from the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for biosciences education. He has participated as a PhD Student Fellow in one European project and as a researcher in 5 other projects.