Cecilia Roque is Full Professor in Bioengineering at the Chemistry Department, School of Science & Technology at NOVA University (Lisbon, Portugal). Cecilia is UCIBIO Director since February 2023, and leads the Biomolecular Engineering Lab at UCIBIO-NOVA. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering (Major in Biotechnology), a PhD in Biotechnology from Instituto Superior Técnico (PT), and an Habilitation in Bioengineering from NOVA University of Lisbon (PT). Cecilia has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge and at the Catholic University of America, a Post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology (University of Cambridge, UK) and at INESC-MN (PT), and a visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge (UK, 2006, 2011), University of São Paulo (BR, 2015-2018), University of Nantes (FR, 2011), City University of New York (US, 2018) and KTH (SE, 2022). Her research focus on bioengineering, namely on the development of advanced functional materials that combine peptidomimetic ligands with bio-based and sustainable materials for bioseparation, sensing and biomedical applications. Cecilia has been the recipient of several national and international awards, namely a Starting Grant and 2 Proof-of-concept grants from the European Research Council (2014; 2022; 2024). She has training from biotech entrepreneurial (Cambridge Entrepreneurship Center, University of Cambridge and COTEC, PT) and leadership programs (Women Leadership Program, NOVA SBE 2022). Since the start of her independent research career in 2007, Cecilia has attracted competitive funding from national and international funding bodies (total raised 8.5M Euros), coordinated 11 research projects, 2 bilateral actions and acted as team member in 9, dealing with a total of 32 academic/I&D and 7 industrial partners, plus interface centers (2) and clinical partners (3). Cecilia published over 105 scientific papers in top-international peer-reviewed journals in multidisciplinary fields (72 as corresponding author), which received over 3,500 citations, resulting in a h-index of 30. She edited 2 books, co-authored 9 book chapters, have filed 5 patents with 2 currently active. She has been invited for 13 plenary/keynote lectures, 36 invited talks, 100 oral presentations and over 120 posters were presented at conferences, merited with 19 awards. Cecilia has wide experience in supervision with completed 11 post-doctoral fellows & junior researchers, 24 PhD students and 39 Master students, apart from 27 visiting scholars and professors from Brazil, Italy and UK. She is an Editorial Board member of Biotechnology Journal, MaterialsToday BIO, Frontiers in Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Cecilia has been a member of several national and international scientific societies and currently serves as an Executive Board member of the European Federation of Biotechnology and member of the Bioengineering and Bioprocessing Division, and president (2023-) of the International Society for Molecular Recognition. Cecilia has been part of organising and steering committees of several international conferences and training schools namely as chair (e.g. Applied Synbio 2016; Workshop ABC2 2017; Biodevices 2019 & 2022; Session organizer ACS BIOT 2019; Affinity 2021 & 2023; Pepperschool 2018 & 2021; MICROBIOTEC21 (chair)) and scientific committee member (e.g. Esbes 2018, Applied synbio 2018/2024; Designer Bioloy 2019/2021; Affinity 2019).