Jorge Miguel Vieira de Frias holds a PhD in Biology, completed in 2023 and granted by the University of the Azores. His thesis topic was about the Development of new insecticide formulations for plant protection, in collaboration with the 3B's - Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics group at the University of Minho. He is currently a postdoc researcher at the Biotechnology Centre of Azores (CBA). During his PhD, he collaborated on biotechnology projects such as NanoNema (insecticide nanoformulations) and Metamine (biotechnological exploitation of enzymes from the wood-boring marine bivalve). Recently participated in the IPM-Popillia project (Integrated Management of the Japanese beetle pest), working on different tasks to understand the influence of various abiotic and biotic factors on the pest's dispersal and population dynamics. He is currently the principal investigator of the PacBioPest project (Exploratory Study of Vesicle-Packaged Bioinsecticides for Sustainable Insect Pest Control). He has received training in bioinformatics and metagenomic data analysis, published more than 10 articles in ISI-indexed journals, contributed to over 30 scientific communications, and released several metagenomic datasets.

Research Areas/interests: Molecular Biology, Blue and Green Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Metagenomics mining, Microbial Biomarkers