Candida M. Manuel is an associate professor in the Lusophone University of Porto, teaching curricular units in the scientific areas of Mathematics and Physics. She is also the course diretor of the first cycle in Environmental Engineering and researcher in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Development and Research on Environment, Applied Management and Space (DREAMS). She attended the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University for her gratuate studies and obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering, a Master degree in Chemical Processes and a PhD degree in Engineering Sciences, with the thesis intitled “Biofilm Dynamics and Drinking Dater Stability: Effets od Hydrodynamics ans Surface Materials”.

Since 1998 she has been giving classes of Mathematics, Microbiology and Environmental Laboratories in engineering courses in different polytechnic institutes and universities (ISPAB, ISTEC, FEUP and ETGI-UCP).  In parallel, she has been working in several national and european projects in diferent scientific areas, such as in fuel cells energy (development of new catalysts for eletrical energy prodution from chemical reaction), biomedical engineering (development of new antimicrobial and biocompatible materials for bone replacement), microbiology and drinking water quality (study of bacteria communities dynamics in biofilms under different growth conditions and their effect in the drinking water quality). These research projects were performed in different research labs, such as, INEB, LSRE and LEPABE.

Now her research interersts are in the area of the microplastics in the water systems and of environmental microbiology.