Indication: Professor Ana Maria Caetano de Faria – Department of Biochemistry and Immunology – Institute of Biological Sciences – UFMG
Period: August 30 to September 12, 2011
Professor António Coutinho is among the 100 most influential Immunology researchers in the world, according to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The ISI established the worldwide impact of the contributions of each scientist to the progress of the different areas of scientific research over the last twenty years and António Coutinho is the only Portuguese present in the ranking.
Graduated in Medicine from the University of Lisbon in 1974 and PhD in Immunology from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, António Coutinho was a Researcher at the Institute of Immunology in Basel, Switzerland, between 1975 and 1979. In 1980, he joined the scientific staff of the Center National Institute of Scientific Research III (CNRS), to create the Immunobiology Unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which he directed from 1982-1998. He was director of the Department of Immunology at that Institute between 1991 and 1994. He is currently director of the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência and visiting professor of Immunology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon.
António Coutinho is the author of more than 400 scientific articles and his research group was responsible for fundamental contributions in the study of the physiological operation of the immune system, the development of immune tolerance and its relationship with autoimmune diseases. His interaction with scientists in the areas of neuroscience also resulted in seminal studies of cognition in complex systems, taking the immune system as an example.