 Daniel Machado is a third-year PhD Student at Minho University under the MIT Portugal Program, in the field of Bioengineering Systems. His work is focused on systems biology and the objective is to develop mathematical and computational models that simulate the internal mechanisms of a cell to predict its behavior under different conditions. Daniel won recently the "Best Poster Award" in the 5th Annual Workshop on the Business-Government Interface: Systems and Synthetic Biology.
1) What motivated you to apply for the PhD in Bioengineering Systems of the MIT-Portugal Program? After finishing my degree in Computer Science and working on software industry for about a year, I realized that I wanted to pursue a higher level in my studies. A PhD in Computer Science would be the natural choice, but I decided that changing areas would be a more interesting and fulfilling experience. I applied to the MIT-Portugal Program mainly because of the opportunity to go abroad. It is a fundamental experience for personal development, and I knew the MIT would be a good place for it. 2) What is your research project about and what do you hope to achieve? My project consists on developing new modeling formalisms and tools for cellular simulation. In particular, I am focused on improving current approaches for simulation of microbial metabolism. The goal is to have better models that accurately simulate the cellular behavior under different conditions. With this, we can predict the optimal manipulations to perform on a microorganism in order to improve the production of compounds with industrial interest. 3) What are the main challenges for you? As a computer scientist I look at the cell as computational machine designed by nature, in order to reverse engineer its specification. However, this is a multidisciplinary area that intersects many fields of science, including computer science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and systems engineering. It is challenging to be able to think and talk in all these “languages” with different people. 4) What are the major benefits of this project on peoples’ lives? The biotechnological applications obtained with these models can have a great impact in terms of health and environmental sustainability. They will allow the replacement of chemical production processes with cleaner biological processes, as well as the production of lower cost pharmaceutical drugs and biofuels. 5) How do you see this area (systems biology) evolving in the future? Despite the great advances it had during the last decade, Systems Biology is still far from its goal of building a fully detailed cell model. I believe it will keep moving towards that goal, and will go beyond single cell models to model multi-cellular organisms. Models of human cells are now being developed and will one day be used for computational medicine. 6) Can you share with us what does it mean for you received the Best Poster Award? For me, it reflects the quality of the research that is done in Portugal, and it shows that despite the current economical crisis, we can be in the lead of scientific research and use it to foster our development. 7) What do you hope to do once you complete your degree? As a computer scientist I am motivated both by scientific research and software development. This area as allowed me to conciliate both these aspects. Therefore, in the near future I would like to keep doing research in Systems Biology. | 
