Helena Vieira is currently the Coordinator Researcher and ERA CHAIR Holder at University of Aveiro, Portugal. She is responsible for launching the ERA CHAIR BESIDE project and coordinating a new team at CESAM research unit for Environmental Economics & Natural Resources, joining natural and socio-economics sciences to develop further knowledge and sustainable future solutions. Helena also acts as Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Circular BioBased Europe Joint Union (CBE-JU), a public private partnership between European Commission and the Biobased Industry Consortium (BIC) to promote bioeconomy and circularity models and was recently appointed as Board Member of EU Mission Restore our Oceans and Waters for the mandate 2022-2025 where she will bridge the mission implementation between the EU and Portugual. Previously she acted as Director General of Maritime Policy under the Minister of the Sea of the XXII Government of Portugal.

Having over 22 years of professional experience in academia, industry and policy backgrounds, she has been a lecturer (U. Lisbon and U. Angola), consultant expert (United Nations, EU - BioBased Industry (BBI-JU), Circular Biobased Economy (CBE- JU), BlueBio Co-Fund, European Innovation Council, CINEA, EASME, etc...), hold political & administrative roles in national government and European Commission and has also acted as manager and coordinator of several companies and teams in the fields of life and ocean sciences and bioeconomy. An entrepreneur at heart she has founded a few start-ups and was co-founder and CEO (2005-13) of BIOALVO SA, a Portuguese marine biotech company. She was also Executive Director of BLUEBIO ALLIANCE (2014-19), the Portuguese network for marine bioresources sector.With a PhD in Biomedicine (Imperial College of London) and an Executive Post Graduation in Leadership and Strategy in Biotech & Pharma from Harvard Business School, she has worked mostly in the borderlines of science, industry & policy, helping everyone to speak common languages and design solutions for common goals. She speaks 5 languages and loves to travel & dive in any of the oceans of our planet!