Rui Pereira received a BSc in Applied Biology by University of Minho (PT) and completed the first year of the Master in Processing and Characterization of Materials by the same University. He holds a European PhD in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and stem cells by the University of Minho (PT) and University of Genova (IT). 

He acquired firm foundations and experience in cellular culture techniques of human primary cells from different tissues, e.g. bone, cartilage, peripherical blood, and stem cells applied to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine models. He has expertise in 2 and 3 D culture systems with and without the use of biomaterials (ceramic scaffolds, hydrogels) for cell expansion and differentiation under physiological and inflammatory conditions. Throughout the same period he gained knowledge on human cellular and molecular immunology events under physiological and pathological conditions.

After, at the Lab. of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) he acquired skills on the use of microfluidic devices as organs on a chip and was responsible for the implementation of functional endothelium on diverse microfluidic chips to dissect vascular and extravascular transport of nanoparticles, tumor cells and pharmacological dynamics under physiological and inflammatory conditions. He developed 3D hydrogels to (co)culture human brain tumor spheroids and somatic brain cells to investigate pharmacological toxicity and delivery efficiency.

In 2018, at the same institute, he joined the Neurobiology of miRNAs lab. where he applied his skill's on 3D culture systems to explore a possible role of miRNAs use as combinatory therapy on glioblastoma and meduloblastoma.

Lately, Rui was awarded with an individual iCARE-2 fellowship (funded by Fondazione AIRC and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 800924) with the project “Nanomedicine targeting Medulloblastoma in a novel xenotransplant model in wild type mice”. 

At the present Rui is member of the Editorial Board of Frontiers of Biotechnology and Bioengineering,  and reviewer for international peer-reviewed journals in the field of Cell and molecular biology, Biomaterials and Biotechnology.