Mariana graduated in Bioengineering (MSc) with a specialization in Molecular Biotechnology from the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto in 2021. During her Master, she went to Utrecht (The Netherlands) for an Erasmus+ internship at University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC). There, at Jos Malda's Orthopaedics group, she explored different 3D Bioprinting approaches - namely Volumetric Bioprinting - and their effects on cellular behavior. Her final master thesis was conducted in the Bioengineered 3D Microenvironments at i3S, under the supervision of Sílvia Bidarra. The project focused on bioengineering a 3D breast tumor angiogenesis model.

Currently, Mariana is a Research Fellow at the Bioengineered 3D Microenvironments group. Under the supervision of Cristina Barrias, she will develop cell-instructive hydrogels with tuneable physical/biochemical properties to mimic ECM and cell-matrix interactions.