Rodrigo Costa

I am interested in the roles played by microbiomes in host and ecosystem health, and combine metagenomics, culturomics, and experimental biology to develop microbiome-based biotechnologies and ecosystem conservation strategies.

Rodrigo Costa is Associate Professor at the Department of Bioengineering of Instituto Superior Técnico, and holds a Ph.D. degree in Life Sciences from the Technical University of Braunschweig. He is the Ambassador of the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) in Portugal, Senior Editor for the journal ISME Communications, and member of three academic societies. Prof. Costa has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and supervised several post-doctoral fellows, Ph.D. (eight thesis completions), M.Sc. (37 thesis completions), and undergraduate students in the framework of > 20 R&D projects. He studies the roles of host-microbe symbioses in natural and fabricated biomes, their relevance to host/ecosystem health, and potential use as renewable sources of novel biotechnologies. Current research projects focus on microbiome engineering approaches to (i) suppress microbial diseases and mitigate climate change stressors in aquaculture and coral reef ecosystems, (ii) design marine-based bioproducts of application across multiple sectors (e.g., health, environment, food, and feed) to leverage the circular blue bioeconomy, and (iii) understand the contribution of host-microbe symbioses to global biogeochemistry and ecosystem conservation.