Raquel Sá-Leão is Principal Investigator and Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology of Human Pathogens at ITQB NOVA, a research Institute of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She is also Vice-Dean at the same institution.

Raquel has a long stand interest on pneumococcal ecology. Current interests include investigating how the use of vaccines and antibiotics is shaping the pneumococcal population; how intra-species interactions affect pneumococcal colonization; and the dynamics of pneumococcal colonization in adulthood. To support these studies Raquel is actively engaged in the development and validation of accurate highly sensitive methods to detect pneumococcal carriage in polymicrobial samples.