Francisco Xavier Malcata

Senior Researcher

Research group: Biotechnology

Academic position: Full Professor (FEUP)

Background: PhD in Chemical Engineering/Food Science – University of Wisconsin, USA

Major research topics

• Development and optimization of photobioreactors.
• Extraction/purification processes involving microalgae.

Selected Publications

Carvalho, A. P., Meireles, L. A. & Malcata, F. X. (2006) Microalgal reactors: a review of enclosed system designs and performances. Biotechnol. Prog. 22: 1490-1506.

Carvalho, A. P., Monteiro, C. M. & Malcata, F. X. (2009) Simultaneous effect of irradiance and temperature on biochemical composition of the microalga Pavlova lutheri. J. Appl. Phycol. 21: 543-552.

Kumar, A., Ergas, S., Yuan, X., Sahu, A., Zhang, Q., Dewulf, J., Malcata, F. X. & van Langenhove, H. (2010) Enhanced CO2 fixation and biofuel production via microalgae: recent developments and future directions. Trends Biotechnol. 28: 371-380.

Guedes, A. C., Amaro, H. M. & Malcata, F. X. (2011) Microalgae as sources of high added-value compounds – a brief review of recent work. Biotechnol. Prog. 27: 597-613.

Amaro, H. M., Macedo, A. C. & Malcata, F. X. (2012) Microalgae: an alternative as sustainable source of biofuels? Energy 44: 58-166.

Selected Projects

PTDC/EBB-EBI/102728/2008: MICROPHYTE: metabolic engineering of Chlamydomonas and environmental optimization for production and release of biohydrogen  (2010-13, FCT, Portugal)

PTDC/BIO/ 71710/ 2006: OPTIC-ALGAE: hybrid photobioreactors, containing microstructured OPTICal fibers Aimed at operating with microaLGAE (2007-10, FCT, Portugal)

POCTI/CTA/ 44600/2002: BIOALGA: study and optimisation of the production of BIOchemicAL compounds by indiGenous species from the portuguese coAst and lagoons (2003-05, FCT, Portugal)

MICROPESCA: study and optimization of production of antiMICRObial comPounds by nativE Species of microalgae in the Coast and lagoons (2000-04, MARE, Portugal)

139-99: MARE NOSTRUM: Micro-Algae for the bioRemediation of watErs coNtaminated with heavy metals and arOmatic-Substituted compounds, in marine plaTfoRMs (1999-01, FUP, Portugal)