Pedro Sousa

Pedro M.F. Sousa is a Senior Scientist of the Merck Healthcare KGaA Satellite Lab of the Structural Biology for Drug Discovery Unit, since 2014.

Pedro M.F. Sousa graduated in Biology at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias (Lisbon), and holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica (ITQB), Universidade Nova de Lisboa. During his PhD, from 2009 to 2013, Pedro contributed for the characterization of the supramolecular assemblies of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis aerobic respiratory chains and for the kinetic characterization of a novel NhaE-type Na+/H+ antiporter from Neisseria meningitidis.

He became highly skilled in biochemical and biophysical methodologies with special focus on proteomic analysis and enzyme kinetic characterization. After a short early-stage postdoc internship at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Hamburg, Germany), Pedro enrolled in an intensive training on Surface Plasmon Resonance Spectroscopy at the Department of Molecular Interactions and Biophysics (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) and has joined iBET in 2014 as a Senior Research Associate.

Current Research is focused on the management of the Molecular Interactions Platform at the Structural Biology for Drug Discovery Unit (iBET), now as a Senior Scientist. Molecular interactions with selected drug targets are evaluated in a combination of different cutting edge biophysical methods such as Surface Plasmon Resonance, Differential Scanning Fluorimetry and Bio-Layer interferometry. This research is developed on the scope of the collaboration with Merck KGaA.