Ana Margarida Carvalho holds a MSc in Bioengineering with a specialization in Molecular Biotechnology from Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Engenharia & Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (Portugal, 2021). During this time, she enrolled in an Erasmus+ internship, having spent one semester (February - July 2020) at the MERLN Institute, Maastricht University (the Netherlands), working with Dr Aart van Apeldoorn’s team on the comparison of different drug strategies to improve the outcomes of clinical islet transplantation. Her MSc dissertation (2021) focused on the development of a bioengineered pancreas using induced pluripotent stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes mellitus and was performed at i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (Portugal), supervised by Dr Bruno Sarmento and Dr Rute Nunes.
After finishing her MSc, Margarida was granted a research fellowship for testing the cytotoxicity and bioavailability of nanomedicines on nasal in vitro models.
Since 2023 Margarida is a PhD student in the International Doctoral Program in Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology Applied to Health Sciences (BiotechHealth) from Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto. She is developing a new 3D in vitro model of human liver fibrosis that can be used to test the efficacy of antifibrotic nano-based drug delivery systems. Her project is a collaboration between i3S and the University of Twente (the Netherlands), under the guidance of Dr Bruno Sarmento, Dr Cristina Barrias and Dr Ruchi Bansal. So far during her PhD, Margarida has had the opportunity to perform short research internships at the School of Medicine from University of Bari (Italy) and at the Centre for Translational Bone, Joint and Soft Tissue Research from Technische Universität Dresden (Germany). She has also participated in two international science schools focused on non-animal models of disease and presented her work in several national and international conferences.
Margarida has over four years of experience in laboratory work, mainly in 2D and 3D cell culture, use of hydrogels as matrices for cell-embedding, biomaterials characterization, pluripotent stem cell differentiation, and cytotoxicity and permeability assays for drug evaluation. Such skills are aligned with her research interests, which are mostly biomaterials and tissue engineering, in vitro disease models, and functionalized nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery. She is the first author of three review articles and one book chapter and is a co-author in two research articles.
Margarida is always looking for new opportunities to learn and to share her knowledge with others. In addition to scientific research, she is also very enthusiastic about science communication and career development activities.