I am a Senior Scientist at Late-Stage R&D and Bioproduction Unit, where I have been working since 2015. In the past 10 years, I have been involved in process development for the production and purification of biologics, including vaccine candidates and gene therapy vectors, using different expression systems, either eukaryotic or microbial, at different scales. Currently, I have a programme manager role, coordinating different projects at LSR&D-BPU.

I am a Biological Engineer by training (2002) and I hold a PhD degree in Biochemistry (2009). In my PhD, I have studied sugar metabolism in lactic acid bacteria, with the use of molecular biology tools, biochemical studies, together with NMR analysis performed in living cells, the work enabled the identification of key enzymes and pathways for the central carbon metabolism of this group of bacteria. Part of my PhD work was performed in the Molecular Genetics group at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). I have continued my post-doctoral studies in the field of biotechnology at Animal Cell Technology Unit from iBET, working on cell line and process development for the production of viral based biopharmaceuticals, for both gene therapy and vaccination. I have published 21 manuscripts, co-supervised 5 master thesis, and participated in 14 research projects, as principal investigator or as team member.