Carla Santos (PhD) is a Junior Researcher at the Center of Biological Engineering (CEB), University of Minho. With 15 years of international scientific career in the field of Molecular Biology R&D, her research explores the use and development of innovative ways to improve genetic classification and identification. In the last five years she has been involved, through national and international collaborations, in studies that have applied a polyphasic approach to perform species identification and diversity studies, works that have led to the description of six new fungal species, one new combination, a new genus, and to the clarification of the mycobiota associated with different environments, food commodities and clinical samples. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals with international circulation, 3 book chapters, participated in several international conferences and has been invited to impart workshops for the scientific community, having a Scopus h-index of 19. She actively participates in the activities of 4-high profile national and EU-funded projects (Ritrain, IS_MIRRI21, MIRRI-PT-Polo Norte, and canSERV). She has been invited to impart annual seminars as part of the Food Mycology course unit (Biological Engineering Integrated Master, University of Minho), and is currently supervising a master student developing a thesis in culturomics/metagenomics. In 2021, she has participated in the Selection and Admission Commissions for the student body of the Master and Doctorate programmes in Biology of Fungi at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. Since 2018 she is the Associate Director of the Laboratory of Applied Mycology at CEB. Her current research interests include the use of massively parallel sequencing for whole genome and metagenomics studies as a way of improving species resolution and classification.