News

SCENT project in NOVA Science magazine

Our group is present in the new edition of NOVA Science magazine. Learn about the #SCENT_project, funded by the European Research Council, in the page 64 (page 33 of the pdf). Download: https://bit.ly/NOVAScience2019pdf

Congratulations, Dr. Cláudia Fernandes!

Many congratulations to Dr. Cláudia Fernandes for successfully defending her PhD work last friday evening, 29th May 2020.

Her thesis is entitled "Exploring affinity for the development of novel biomaterials", supervised by prof. Cecília Roque and co-supervised by Dr. Ana Pina and Dr. Tiago Fernandes.

Top downloaded article

Our article was in the top 10% downloaded among work published between January 2018 and December 2019.

Poster presentation @ Virtual ACS Spring Meeting

The ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo, scheduled to happen on 22-26th March in Philadelphia, has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we could not be physically present, we could still submit and present a poster, which can be seen here: https://doi.org/10.1021/scimeetings.0c02867

New review article on liquid crystals

Our latest review has been published online in the most recent issue of the Advanced Optical Materials journal.

Welcome to the team, Gabriela!

Gabriela is an undergraduate student in Pharmacy and Biochemistry from USP - University of São Paulo, Brazil. She will be working closely with Manuel Matos on the production of novel affinity adsorbents towards antibodies. During her stay, Gabriela will enhance upstream and downstream processing of novel ligands discovered from combinatorial libraries.

Welcome to the team, Prof. Cícero Cena!

Prof. Cícero Cena arrived last week and is staying with us for one month. He is graduated in Physics and holds a PhD in Materials Science, he is an Associated Professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS).

Welcome to the team, Guilherme!

Guilherme is our new Research Assistant in the SCENT project. He has a Masters degree in Micro and Nanotechnology Engineering from FCT-NOVA and did his master thesis in the University of Aalborg (Denmark), in the "Development of a microfluidic platform for dielectrophoretic separation of polymeric nanoparticles".

Welcome to the team, João!

João is a student in the 3rd year of the Integrated Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering in FCT-NOVA. Since he has a natural curiosity and already does electronics as a hobby, he is now investing his free time in our lab, gaining experience and know-how in several fields.

Welcome to the team, Sabrina

Sabrina arrived this week and is staying in our lab until March 2020. She is Brazilian, born in São Paulo, and is beginning the 3rd year of her bachelor degree in Pharmacy – Biochemistry in USP. She will be working closely with Manuel Matos on the production of novel affinity adsorbents towards antibodies. Antibodies and related fragments are important tools in biotechnology context due to their potential as therapeutic and imaging agents.

Students from the Master in Biochemistry stay in the lab

During these last 4 weeks, on every Monday, we had Inês Ferreira and Cristina Nunes in our lab, two students from the FCT NOVA Master in Biochemistry. They were eager to assist lab routines and learn some research procedures under the Biomolecular Techniques discipline. We are thankful for having students learning more about our lab but also for experiencing the enthusiasm of doing research. Hopefully this will motivate students pursuing the investigation path.

Fernando Nunes finished today his Master

Fernando Nunes, our last master student in the group, finished today successfully his Master in Bioorganic Chemistry.

Arménio Barbosa was the main supervisor and Cecília Roque co-supervisor. The work developed during the thesis was mainly in computational chemistry and related to “Molecular properties of VOC sensing materials”.

Congratulations Fernando! We will miss your usual cheer and joy at the lab. 

New paper about metallopeptides & computational design approach

Hydrolytic zinc enzymes are common targets for protein design but the computational design of metal-containing proteins remains challenging due to the need to properly model protein–metal interactions. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose to integrate information of protein–metal interactions in long time scale simulations by focusing on the inherent flexibility of small proteins and their interactions with the metal ion by molecular dynamics simulations and spe

Beatriz Mariz finished her MSc in Biochemistry

Today it was Beatriz Mariz day! She just finished with much success her Master in Biochemistry with the thesis “Artificial fluorescent phosphatase enzyme”. Ana Pina, the supervisor, Cecília Roque, co-supervisor, and the rest of the group could not be more happy for her.

We wish you all the best Bia, it was great to meet, work and have fun with you.

Inês Padrão finished her MSc in Biotechnology

Inês finished her MSc in Biotechnology with the thesis “Multicomponent Chemically and Physically Cross-linked Hydrogels” last Wednesday, the 6th of November.

Congratulations Inês Padrão for a successful Master Thesis Defense. We wish you all the best to your next professional challenge. It was great to have you with us.