Prof. Judith Maria Bragança is a Professor in the Dept. of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus. Prof. Bragança joined the Department of Biological Sciences, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus as a faculty in 2004 when BITS Pilani established its third campus in Goa. Since then she is involved in teaching a number of courses at the First Degree, Higher Degree and Work Integrated Learning programmes. Her research expertise includes Biodegradable polymers, Biodiversity of Halophiles, Biotechnological applications of halophilic archaea and bacteria and Metal tolerance in microorganisms. Dr.

Braganca has a PhD in Microbiology from Goa University in 2003. Her Doctoral work elucidated the biodiversity of halophilic archaea and explored their mechanisms of resistance to arsenic and cadmium.She has been a Principal Investigator for in house as well as externally funded research projects. Prof. Bragança has over 35 publications in reputed peer reviewed journals and has a number of conference proceedings to her credit. She has presented her research work at numerous National and International conferences. Dr. Braganca currently serves on the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Microbiology, Extreme Microbiology.

She has been actively involved as a referee of international journals from Elsevier, FEMS, Springer, etc. Prof. Braganca is currently Advisor to 5 PhD students and has successfully graduated 3 PhD students besides numerous dissertation and project students. She has served on several thesis/dissertation advisory committees.