Hugo M. Botelho is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon (FCUL). Researcher at the Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute (BioISI / FCUL) and Manager of BioISI's High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Facility. Scientist with a strong expertise in high-content screening, microscopy, cell biology, bioimage analysis, drug discovery and protein folding in vivo and in vitro.

Obtained his in Biochemistry (specialty: biophysics) in 2010 under the supervision of Cláudio M. Gomes (ITQB/UNL) for studies on protein folding and aggregation. In 2012 joined Margarida Amaral's lab at FCUL to research novel therapeutics for Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Was a long term visitor of EMBL Heidelberg where received training on high-throughput microscopy, RNA interference screening and membrane trafficking. Since 2014 he has been employing siRNA-based screens to characterize novel therapeutic CF target genes. Since 2019 he is co-responsible by FCUL Microscopy Facility, being especially dedicated to high-throughput / high-content screening technologies.

As principal investigator he has coordinated research projects focusing on the identification and characterization of novel molecules with therapeutic relevance for CF using natural compound sources and HTS methodologies. Since 2014 he has established a HTS Facility at BioISI and now serves as its manager, which includes supervision of 1 research technician. Each year the facility provides 3000 hours of equipment access time to about 35 users regarding sample preparation, imaging, data analysis and screening assay services. He is also actively engaged in developing and deploying automated image analysis algorithms for high content microscopy, software development and data science approaches to biological data.

Has authored 30 original peer reviewed publications, 4 book chapters, supervised students and post-docs and been involved in several scientific research projects, both as team member and principal investigator. As manager of the HTS Facility, represents BioISI and FCUL at the Portuguese Platform of BioImaging (PPBI), PT-OPENSCREEN, Euro-BioImaging ERIC, the Lisbon Area BioImaging Group, among others. He is a regular trainer and speaker at microscopy and CF meetings and courses. h-index 18 (Scopus, Oct 2026)