Born in November 1968 in Vieira do Minho (Salamonde), he graduated in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto in 1990, where he served as a Teaching Assistant and was awarded the Best Student Prize by the Eng. António de Almeida Foundation. In the same year, he began his academic career at the University of Minho (UMinho) as a Trainee Assistant, where he completed a Ph.D. in Sciences in 1999, specializing in microbiology, bioenergetics, and metabolism.

Currently, he is a member of the Centre of Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA), where he leads a research group in Plant Biology. He has supervised over 20 doctoral and postdoctoral students, as well as several master's and undergraduate students. He has published more than 100 scientific papers, co-authored book chapters, and edited relevant international books. He has served as Principal Investigator and team member in various research and international cooperation projects and was a management committee member of three COST Actions.

He held the position of Director of the Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences. – UMinho Pole (CITAB-UMinho) and was part of the Executive Committee of CITAB. Among his scientific awards are the APDF Scientific Award (2006) granted by FCT/French Embassy and the Best Paper Award (2005) for the best scientific paper published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture. He is a member of the editorial board of prestigious scientific journals, such as PLOS ONE, ScienceDirect, and Frontiers in Plant Science. At UMinho, he coordinated the integration of the School of Sciences (ECUM) into the collaborative laboratory ADVID – Vinha e Vinhos, where he serves on the Technical Council. He has been involved in evaluation panels for scientific projects and scholarships (FCT, CCDRN, Fulbright, ANR-France, DFG-Germany, BARD-USA/Israel, ANCS-Romania, and FONCYT-Argentina).

He has been an Associate Professor with Habilitation in the Department of Biology (DB) at ECUM since 2012. Internationally, he has taught at UC Davis (USA) under the Fulbright Program and at various European universities, including the University of Bordeaux, University of Bologna, UCLouvain, and the University of Lyon (UCBL1), under the Erasmus + program. At UMinho, he served as the Erasmus coordinator at the DB, a member of the DB Management Committee, and Director of both the undergradute and master courses, and the International Agrichains Doctoral Program. He was Head of the Biology Departmente from 2018 to 2020. Since 2019, he has been a member of the ECUM Scientific Council and, from 2019 to 2021, served on the ECUM School Council. He is member of the Scientific and Editorial Council of UMinho Editora and the board of the "Curtir Ciência" Association in Guimarães. From 2021 to 2024, he served as Vice-President of the School of Sciences for interaction with society and internationalization.