Mónica Bettencourt-Dias

Representative
Sessions Chaired
at International
Meetings
Selected Honors,
Boards,
Committees, and
other
Professional
Services
Outreach
Activities
•8/2006-University of Bayreuth, Germany, “Dissecting the function of SAK
kinase in templated and de novo centriole assembly”
•8/2006-Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development,
University of Minnesota, USA, 1-8-06SAKing the centrosome; SAK kinase
and the centrosome cycle,
•4/2005-BSCB &BSDB joint Spring meeting, Warwick, UK, “Genome wide
survey of protein kinases required for cell cycle progression”
•9/2004-Sixth International Workshop on Chromosome Segregation and
Aneuploidy, Cortona, Italy “Genome wide survey of protein kinases required
for cell cycle progression”
•7/2004-Science Summer School, Cambridge University, “Decoding the
genome: innovative strategies to studying the cell cycle”
•6/2004-Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST)
network meeting, Barcelona, “Training scientists to communicate to lay
audiences: successes and limitations of a science communication workshop”
•3/2004-RNA and Microarrays - Broaden Your Horizons, Imperial College,
London “A functional genomic screen to identify protein kinases involved in the
regulation of mitosis”
•3/2001-Wellcome/CRC Institute, Cambridge, UK “An example of adult cell
plasticity: cell cycle re-entry in the adult newt cardiomyocyte”
•European Drosophila Research Conference (Lisbon, 2011)
•Gordon Conference on Motile and Contractile Systems (US, 2011)
•ASCB - Cilia and Centrosome minisymposia – (San Diego, 2009)
•EMBO workshop - Polo like kinases: from the fly to the clinic 20 years
onwards, (Portugal, 2009)
•ELSO – meeting - Nice (2008)
•From Jan 2010 I am part of the editorial board of the journal of the American
Society for Cell Biology (MBC)
•2008-2009 Part of the committee that selects PhD students at IGC
•2002-I review manuscripts and grants for a variety of journals (Nature, Science,
Developmental Cell, Current Biology, Journal Cell Biology, Journal Cell
Science, Molecular Biology of the Cell, EMBO, Cell Motility & Cytoskeleton, and
Trends in Cell Biology) and funding bodies such as the Welcome Trust (UK),
CRUK (UK), Swiss National Foundation, Austrian Academy of Sciences.
As a scientist I think it is also my role to promote science and scientific
knowledge amongst different audiences, such as the lay public, media and
decision-makers. I am engaged in promoting the training of scientists in
communication skills and in identifying effective ways of doing that. I coorganised
and evaluated several workshops on those topics in Europe and
Mozambique. Since 2001 I have applied successfully for funding of the
activities referred above. Those activities were awarded grants from the
Portuguese Government; the Gulbenkian Foundation; the Gatsby
Foundation (UK); the European Union and the British Council (PT). My
laboratory also receives regularly students from high-schools & I have gone
to high schools (16-17 yr olds) to explain our research and what is “to be a
scientist”. I have explained the work of my laboratory to a variety of
Portuguese media. Our work has featured several times in the Portuguese
radio, TV, newspapers and magazines. Our website
(http://sites.igc.gulbenkian.pt/ccr/) is aimed at International scientists and at
the Portuguese lay public. People from our laboratory regularly go to
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