Rate My Professor Rosane Freitas Schwan

Professor Rosane Freitas Schwan is a Full Professor (Professora Titular) in the Department of Biology at Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA). She holds a degree in Agronomic Engineering from the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, a master’s degree from the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Bath, United Kingdom, awarded in 1995. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2020. Prior to joining UFLA in 1998, she served as a researcher at the Centro de Pesquisas do Cacau (CEPLAC) from 1984 to 1996, where she developed techniques to improve chocolate quality and microbial consortia to accelerate cocoa fermentation.

At UFLA, her work centers on the microbiology of spontaneous and controlled fermentations of coffee, cocoa, sugarcane, cassava, and other substrates, with applications to food and beverage quality improvement, industrial microbiology, and environmental microbiology. She has coordinated the graduate program in Agricultural Microbiology and Food Science, directed the Collection of Cultures of Agricultural Microbiology (CCMA), and led the CNPq research group in Applied Microbiology. She is a CNPq Research Productivity Fellow, associate editor of the Brazilian Journal of Microbiology and Food Microbiology, and has held advisory roles with FAPEMIG and international committees, including the International Committee on Yeasts. Her contributions include numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on fermentation microbiology, along with leadership in European Union-funded projects on enzymes for tropical fruits.