Jorge Miguel Vieira de Frias is a Postdoc researcher at the Biotechnology Centre of Azores (CBA) of University of Azores. He has a degree in Biological and Health Sciences (2011) and a Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences (2015) from the University of the Azores. He concluded his PhD in Biology (2023) granted by the University of Azores, whose thesis topic was "Development of new insecticide formulations for plant protection", with work planned at the CBA and in collaboration with the 3B's - Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics group at the University of Minho. During his PhD research, he collaborated with various biotechnology projects such as NanoNema (insecticide nanoformulations) and Metamine (biotechnological exploitation of enzymes from the wood-boring marine bivalve). Now recently integrated into the IPM-Popillia project (Integrated Management of the Japanese beetle pest), he is working on different tasks in order to understand the influence of various abiotic and biotic factors on the pest's dispersal and population dynamics. He took two intensive courses in bioinformatics and metagenomic data analysis. He has published 7 scientific articles, with 3 articles as first author and 4 in co-authorship in ISI journals. Also published 5 metagenomic datasets and received 1 startup award. He is a licensed local skipper (Licence Nr. 183131) with 5 years of sailing experience and is interested in sea trips to explore genetic resources through next-generation sequencing.

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