An interview with Monica Bettencourt-Dias

Monica Bettencourt-Dias

Mónica Bettencourt-Dias is a Group Leader at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC, Portugal) since 2006, where she studies centriole and cilia biogenesis, homeostasis, evolution and dysregulation using a variety of approaches, model organisms and patient samples. She did her PhD with Jeremy Brockes (UCL, UK), postdoctoral research with David Glover (University of Cambridge (UK)) and a 2-year diploma course on science communication at the Birkbeck College (UK). She is a member of EMBO YIP and EMBO, having been awarded the European Eppendorf Award for young investigators, two Pfizer prizes, an ERC starting and ERC consolidator grants. Since 2018 she is the director of IGC. 

1. How can we advocate for developmental biology? 

I think firstly we should advocate for science always through the importance of knowledge and its beauty. Developmental biology is in fact one of the most beautiful and mysterious disciplines. How our body is formed, with such different tissues and organs that have such different functions. Starting with a single cell!!! I think now we have images and movies that powerfully illustrate this amazing process in different species!!  

Then use the argument of how useful it can be, in particular for understanding human diseases such as developmental diseases and cancer.

2. What are the principles and objectives to pursue excellence of a research institute? 

In a research Institute like ours the most important principle to pursue our goals is to empower young people. To give young and motivated people, all tools to reach their full potential. Moreover, to create fora that ensure people from different cultural and scientific backgrounds meet and discuss their science, as the most original science is very dependent on the interaction between different perspectives. This is what we aim to do at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência.

Where do you see the field going? 

I think CRISPR, genomics and other tools opened new windows into looking at understudied organisms and being able to not depend on a few organisms in the tree of life. Evolution has a produced a beautiful diversity of creatures and they tell us about the space of possibilities. This is an amazing source of information that is very important to fully understand cellular and developmental mechanisms.