Raquel Tavares

I arrived in CIBIO in September 2021, as a Principal Investigator, in the newly formed group: PlantEvol.

I am an agronomic engineer by training and my research has always been on plant biology, first on plant ecophysiology (measuring and modeling the water status of various plant covers, related to the environmental conditions) and, the last 15 years, on plant genomics. I am particularly interested on the link between genotype and phenotype, and between molecular evolution and functional/phenotypical evolution with a special interest in evolution after gene and genome duplication.

My latest research project combines these two approaches by aiming to detect genetic and epigenetic variants associated to heat and drought resistance in grapevine. I am also currently working on the link between gene duplication and the early evolution of the angiosperms hermaphrodite flower.

I have been a Lecturer at Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France) since 2005, working at LBBE, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Évolutive. I was a visiting scientist from July 2019 -to August 2021 at Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon, and at Instituto Gulbenkian Ciência, in Oeiras, in 2011-2012.

As a Lecturer, I have had important teaching activities in Biomaths, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, Plant Genomics, Phylogeny and Molecular and Genome Evolution, from 1st year to Master students.