I am a molecular microbiologist, specialized in S. aureus cell and molecular biology, cell wall biosynthesis and mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance (PhD in Molecular Biology, FCT-NOVA /2019). My main research interests are in bacterial pathogenesis and molecular bacteriology namely: host-pathogen interaction, intracellular persistence, antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, stringent response, genetic competence and mechanobiology using advanced microscopy approaches such as Super-resolution Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM) and microphysiological systems as Lung-on-Chip technology. Currently, I am a researcher at the Intracellular Microbial Infection Biology (IMIB) Laboratory (P.I.: Pedro M. Pereira), hosted at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica (ITQB-NOVA). I have performed postdocs at the Molecular Microbiology of Bacterial Pathogens Lab (P.I.: R. Sobral), at Laboratory of Molecular Genetics (P.I.: H. de Lencastre) and at Microbial Stress Lab (P.I.: S. Pauleta). During these postdocs I was responsible for the introduction on new research lines in the host labs such as the production of bacterial cellulose for wound dressing applications and the development of copper and silver NHC conjugated compounds as antimicrobials against several pathogens. I have authored 11 peer-reviewed journal articles, 7 conference proceedings and 2 book chapters, among which 15 as first-author with a total of 903 citations (Google scholar). I have participated in 15 research grants both from national and international funding agencies, three as a Principal Investigator. My work was presented more than 40 communications selected from abstracts (oral and panel) in national and international conferences and in seminars by invitation. I have extensive experience in supervision of students with a total of 19 supervisions and co-supervisions of national and international students from BSc and MSc degrees, Erasmus program and PhD and MSc laboratory rotations. I am a lecturer at the MolBioS PhD program at ITQB-NOVA. I was assistant in the module "Introduction to Microbiology, Microbial Genetics and Recombinant DNA Technology in Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes" of the Medical Microbiology Master and I was teaching assistant of the disciplines "Biochemistry of Foods" and "Chemistry and Biochemistry of Foods" at NOVA-FCT. I am an ad-hoc reviewer for PeerJ, PLOS ONE and the European Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. I am part of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology, and I have participated in 19 jury committees as main opponent in MSc, post-graduations, and BSc examinations. I was also an evaluator of three international grants (Latvia and Australia) and have participated as member of different evaluation panels and committees. I serve as Member of the MPS_NOVA Twinning Research Committee. I have participated in dissemination activities such as the ITQB-open day, Expo-FCT, European Researcher's night and the Feira Internacional de Ciência (FIC.A). I was also member of the Task Force for COVID-19, performing RT-PCR testing during the covid pandemics. I was awarded an ESCMID research grant as PI in 2022. In 2023, I secured the highly competitive FCT/MCTES CEEC Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus for the project PERSISTAUREUS (Ref.: 2023.06402.CEECIND/CP2836/CT0008). In 2025, I was awarded the MPS_NOVA TWINNING (European Commission) grant as PI for the project Modelling Bacterial Pneumonia Infection Dynamics in Lung-on-Chip. Later that year, I received an ECRA (Early Career Researcher Award) grant as PI, in collaboration with M. del Rosario, for the project Monitoring Infection-Induced Cellular Stress Using PhotoFiTT in Staphylococcus aureus Models.