Isabel Santos de Sousa
PhD candidate @ Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP)
Member @ AstroBioLusitanos
Health for all, no matter where they are – in any land and even in space. For the future will certainly bring us to the stars, and not even then and there will we be able to exist without it.
About
Isabel Santos de Sousa holds a MSc degree in Bioengineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, and is currently a PhD candidate in the same institution.
Her research focuses on the development of sustainable bioregenerative life support systems for space exploration using microorganisms. Isabel was awarded the Blue Young Talent Scholarship (2022) and the Gulbenkian Novos Talentos Scholarship (2023). She was sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) to participate in the ESA’s Human Space Physiology Training Course (Belgium, 2023), and participated in the Josep Comas i Solà Astrobiology Summer School, co-hosted by NASA (Spain, 2023). Her work was presented in the International Astrobiology School 2024 (Italy) and at Fantasy Basel (Switzerland, 2025).
Isabel is part of AstroBioLusitanos, a group of Portuguese students that shares knowledge about astrobiology through social media, workshops, school outreach, having further organized a national conference.