Alexandre Quintanilha

Portuguese physicist and biologist, former director of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology of the University of Porto and Professor at ICBAS - Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences. Quintanilha completed his secondary school studies in Lourenço Marques. He moved to South Africa, where he completed his B.Sc. (Hons) in theoretical physics in 1967 (University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg), and his Ph.D. in solid state physics in 1972 (University of Paris). Quintanilha switched his attention to biology when he moved to California in 1972. He worked for nearly 18 years at the University of California, Berkeley, in the US. He moved to Portugal in 1990 and became director of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology of the University of Porto.