Filipa L. Sousa

Assoc. Prof. Filipa L. Sousa leads the Genome Evolution and Ecology Group at the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Life Sciences, Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology. Her research bridges microbial evolution, bioenergetics, and geobiological processes.

Key projects include:

• Pan-Metabolic Profiling of Archaea (WWTF, 2016–2025), developing genomic tools for metabolic classification.
• Evolution of Physiology: The Link between Earth and Life (ERC Starting Grant, 2019–2025), exploring energy metabolism evolution in archaea.

Her work focuses on archaeal physiology, sulfur metabolism, and metagenomic data analysis, with recent publications in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and Nature Microbiology. Notable awards include the Vienna Research Groups for Young Investigators (VRG) – Gender Mainstreaming (2017).

She supervises PhD students like Jessica Gomes da Silva and collaborates with institutions such as the Institute of Molecular Evolution at HHU Düsseldorf. Media outlets like BBC Earth and Nature have highlighted her contributions to understanding extremophilic archaea and early life evolution.