Cristina Velasco (CV) started her research career during an Erasmus stay at the U.Tromsø (Norway), being involved in an EU research project and contracted by Nofima AS, leading research institute within the field of aquaculture. In 2012, she obtained a 1-year research grant from the Spanish government to work in the “Ecology and Animal Biology” department at U.Vigo, improving the viability of Octopus vulgaris production, which resulted in 1 paper in collaboration with the INSTM-Tunisia, supported by a FAO project “MedSudMed”. In 2014, CV began her PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. JL Soengas regarding involvement of fatty acid sensing mechanisms in feed intake regulation in fish. During this period, she also carried out a 3 months’ stay at U. Saskatchewan (Canada) in 2017. In November 2018, CV defended her international PhD Thesis obtaining cum laude distinction and being awarded with the 1st PhD Extraordinary Award of Natural Sciences by U.Vigo. In 2020, she was granted a post-doctoral position at the Portuguese Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), under the scope of the international project “MOBFOOD” and the supervision of Prof. LMP Valente. After 6 months, she was selected for a “Juan de la Cierva” contract (FJC2019-040367-I), but she gave up being hired in CIIMAR as researcher through a competitive process. In 2022, CV submitted the "Colmafeed" project to the “Individual CEEC”, successfully obtaining funding for the next 6 years from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portuguese Government) (2022.04213.CEECIND). Despite being a junior researcher, she achieved another milestone in her career by obtaining a prestigious "Ramón y Cajal" contract (RYC2022- 037213-I) in the 2022 call, which allowed her to join the Fish Physiology research group at U.Vigo, further consolidating her position in this field. Her PhD was focused on assessing the basic physiological and endocrine mechanisms involved in the regulation of fish appetite to improve feed efficiency in species of relevance to EU aquaculture. This fundamental approach provided multidisciplinary useful tools for her postdoctoral work in Portugal, during which CV collaborates with major companies in the agri-food sector responding to their emerging problems. This has allowed her to develop her own line of applied research in the aquaculture sector, with the main objective of identifying and demonstrating the potential of sustainable functional ingredients to promote fish growth and robustness. CV´s skills and knowledge allow her to optimize resources, carrying out preliminary studies before moving on to the animal demonstration with those prototypes of ingredients that can have a real benefit, thus working holistically and efficiently while keeping in mind the 3Rs principle. In this context, she has participated in 7 international projects in collaboration with public and private R&D institutions and industrial partners evidencing a great technological transference. In the last years, she submitted different international projects as Principal Investigator and recently she coordinated an EU project proposal (EEA Grants) involving public and private institutions from Portugal and Norway. This research line also allowed CV to develop her leadership, supported by the number of students under supervision (1 PhD, 1 master, 3 BSc, 2 Erasmus+). CV was part of the CIIMAR's gender equality commission. In addition, she was part of the scientific committee and conference chairpersons of “VII annual workshop for the doctoral programme in animal sciences” (U.Porto, 2021) and the "Blue think" conferences (U.Porto, 2020 & 2021). This research career has been combined with a contract as assistant professor at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (U.Porto) since 2020. Main achievements: 40 papers in SCI journals (5 articles/year, 577 citations, h index 14), 15 book chapters, and more than 46 works presented in international conferences.