EvoS at the University of Lisbon (UL) is the first EvoS program in Europe.

At the UL EvoS is hosted by the Centre for Environmental Biology, CBA.

EvoS is comprised of two courses – EvoS-1 for undergraduate students and EvoS-2 for postgraduate students. Students from any graduate or undergraduate background are welcome.

A one-day International Symposium is held annually that students from both courses are required to attend. The symposium is open to others wishing to attend.

EvoS at the UL is being implemented and managed by Filipa Vala. Margarida Matos and David Sloan Wilson are the project’s supervisors. Filipa also lectures the courses.

Filipa is a postdoc at Centre for Environmental Biology (CBA), with a fellowship from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2001 in Evolutionary Biology. She was a researcher until 2005. Since then she has worked mainly in promoting scientific public awareness in Portugal, using all media available (audiovisual – television and documentary film; exhibitions, books).

She was part of the team that developed the exhibition “Darwin’s Evolution” (2009) for Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and wrote the book Darwin em Cabo Verde (“Darwin in Cape Verde”) edited by Gulbenkian. She co-commissioned de exhibition Linces, Lobos e Águias Reais: o passado, presente e future da conservação em Portugal (“Lynxes, Wolves and Golden Eagles: the past, present and future of conservation in Portugal”) and was part of the team that developed the exhibition Insectos em Ordem (“Insects in order”). Both exhibitions are at Museus da Politécnica (R. da Escola Politécnica 56-58 in Lisbon), and they were part of a vast program celebrating 2010 as the International year of Biodiversity called Bioeventos 2010 of which Filipa was a co-organizer.

Filipa’s scientific curriculum can be found here.