Seena Sahadevan, PhD

After obtaining a master's degree in Biosciences from Mangalore University in India in 2002, I completed PhD in Biosciences, Mangalore University in December 2005.  I further attained a postdoctoral fellowship in Canada, funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for two years (2005-2007 December) at Mount Allison University after which I was selected for the position of Auxiliary Investigator (2008-2013 March; Ciencia 2007) at CBMA (Centro de Biologia Molecular e Ambiental), University of Minho, Portugal.  I also served as an invited scientist at University of Minho and University of Coimbra, Portugal (2013-2015). I moved to MARE (Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre), University of Coimbra as a postdoctoral researcher (2015-2018). Currently, I am working as a researcher at MARE (2019-present), University of Coimbra.

I contributed to developing research that is novel in the field of aquatic microbes, especially aquatic fungi and introduced new avenues of research like, identification of aquatic fungi by DNA barcoding in Portuguese streams, assessment of intraspecies diversity of aquatic fungi using DNA barcodes, biogeography of aquatic fungi and toxicity of engineered nanoparticles to aquatic food webs.

As a part of a transnational cooperation programme between Portugal and Germany, I also conducted research at Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) and Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ (Germany). I collaborated with well-known researchers from Germany (Prof.Gerd-Joachim Krauss; Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg and Dietmar Schlosser; Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ), Canada (Prof. Felix Bärlocher, Mount Allison University), India (Prof. K.R. Sridhar, Mangalore University) and Portugal (Prof. Manuel Graça and Prof. Fernanda Cássio). 

I was successful in attaining projects funded by FCT both as a principal investigator (PTDC/AAG-GLO/3896/2012; 2013 -2015) and also as a team member (PTDC/AAC-AMB/113746/2009, 2011-July2013; PTDC/AAC-AMB/121650/2010, 2011- July 2013) with a total budget of 457,567 Euros.