Dr. Paulo Sousa is a Junior
Researcher in the Microelectromechanical Systems Research Unit—CMEMS and LABBELS Associate Laboratory, at University of Minho. He graduated in Biotechnology Engineering with Master's in Micro/Nano Technologies. In April 2017, he finished his PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minho. In 2021, he was awarded with a Junior Researcher Contract—Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Individual Support (CEECIND). He was a Junior Researcher at RTChip4Theranostics, developing temperature microsensors and heating systems for integration in OoC, at the Microelectromechanical Systems Research Unit at the University of Minho, which also participates in the Associate Laboratory in Biotechnology, Bioengineering and Electromechanical Systems (LABBELS). From 2020 to 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ANI-funded project “PDMSmasks4ALL” PT2020-Co-development TR&D (POCI-01-02B7-FEDER-069844) involving
co-development with companies (OTOJAL) and R&I entities (CVR and IPB). From 2018 to 2020, he was an Auxiliary Researcher in the "NEXT-SEA project - Next-generation monitoring of coastal ecosystems in a scenario of global change" (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000032) at the University of Minho. His main research areas are marine and biomedical microsystems, focusing on lab-on-a-chip devices, microfluidics,
microfabrication techniques, biosensors, immunosensors, micro-pressure sensors, optical detection, and organ-on-a-chip.
Dr. Raquel O. Rodrigues is an Assistant Researcher at LABBELS/U.Minho and a former Marie Curie Individual Fellow at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, with a secondment at Harvard Medical School, with the project BrainChip4Med. She obtained her PhD from the University of Porto in 2018, winning the Fraunhofer Best Portuguese PhD Thesis Competition in Biomedical Engineering. She has experience in the multidisciplinary fields of biotechnology, nanomedicine, microfluidics, biosensors, and organ-on-a-chip, acquired at highly recognized institutions, namely, Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (Fulbright Research Grant) and NASA Ames Research Center (International Internship). Raquel’s professional ambition is to become a leading researcher in the area of nanomedicine and advanced
diagnostic devices, which can bring meaningful and real impact to research and medicine.
Prof. Dr. Graça Minas is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho (UMinho), and a Researcher at the Center for Microelectromechanical Systems (CMEMS, UMinho). She graduated in Industrial Electronics Engineering in
1994, received an M.Sc. degree in 1998, a Ph.D. degree in 2004, and a Habilitation degree in 2023, all from the University of Minho, Guimarães,
Portugal. Her main research is mostly centered in the area of biomedical microdevices, specifically in lab-on-a-chip, integration of electronic circuits and optical filters, solid-state integrated sensors, biosensors, actuators, and, more recently, organ-on-a-chip. She has participated in 40 national and European projects and has been the principal investigator in 10 of them (8 of these 10 are finished), in the area of microsystems for biomedical devices. She was/is a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals in the field of biomedical microsystems, She has been member of the Scientific Council of Engineering School at UMinho since 2019.
