Cristina Maria Santos Louro is Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra - Mechanical Engineering Department, Portugal. She received her D.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1991 and her M.Sc. in Materials Engineering in 1995, graduating with excellent, both from University of Coimbra, Portugal. She completed with honors and distinction the Ph.D. in 2000 in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, studying the mechanical and thermochemical behavior of hard nanocomposite sputtered coatings. In 2001, she joined the Institut de Physique de la Matière Complexe, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, as a postdoctoral researcher on surface engineering field. She has a broad higher education activity, covering skills and knowledge of materials science and engineering of several undergraduate and graduate level programs from Faculty of Sciences and Technology, UC, Coimbra, such as Mechanical, Materials, Physics, Environmental, Industrial and Biomedical Engineering. She supervised nearly 30 M.Sc. students. Under the Erasmus Teaching Staff Programme, every year she cooperates in education and training with European universities. She scientific leadership some postdoctoral students training. Her scientific output includes almost 90 publications from which about 40 articles are described in Science database, corresponding to 500 citations (by Scopus h-15 index ). The participation in international and national congresses (author and co-author contribution) exceeds more than 100. She had made some contributions to the following research areas: 1. Production Technology: Magnetron Sputter Deposition (hard coatings; nanocomposite superhard coatings; low friction DLC coatings; light B4C ceramic thin films; decorative coatings based on metals oxides); Mechanical Alloying (B4C-metal systems); Dynamic Compaction (explosive shockwaves). 2. Functionality and Performance: Mechanical properties (hardness, bending); Chemical optimization/stability (alloying); Microstructural evolution; Structural stability (temperature); Oxidation behaviour (mechanism and kinetic); Electrical response (humidity and pH); 3. Materials Design: Monolithic and Composite; Polymer Reinforcement; Thickness and Morphology; Interface engineering; Equilibrium and Metastable phases; Micro- and Nanostructures. Her current research activity still lies on surface engineering, with particular focus on the surface functionalization of metallic alloys for biomedical applications. She served on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Surface and Coatings Technology; Thin Solid Films, Applied Surface Science; Coatings; Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Letters; Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance, Coatings, and also international conferences, such as the International Conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films (ICMCTF) and the International Conference on Plasma Surface Engineering (PSE). C. Louro is a SOPORVAC fellow, the Portuguese representative of the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA).