I am an Associate Professor with Habilitation at NOVA FCT, Head of the Department of Conservation and Restoration and Director of the Research Unit VICARTE ( (Vidro e Cerâmica para as Artes: Glass and Ceramic for the Arts). I work in the field of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage in the area of Technical Art History and Materials Degradation. My research motivation focuses on the preservation of our material cultural history and on enriching the knowledge of our shared past through the history of historical objects. I started to work in this field as a result of my PhD, where I focused on the degradation mechanisms of medieval stained glass. My research reaches far wider than my direct scientific community due to the use of glass in several fields of material science, in particular materials for optical and electronic devices and vitrification of radioactive waste. After my PhD, I was a co-coordinator of a project on the materials and techniques used by the Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918). Our findings directly contributed to the artist's catalogue raisonné (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian) and impacted the knowledge of the quality of paints produced by different historical companies and its influence on the degradation of paints. At this time, I initiated the conservation and exhibition of a previously unrecognised stained-glass collection from the Palácio Nacional da Pena (Sintra). I created a research project on King Ferdinand II of Portugal's collection of glass and stained glass. I assembled a team, which included curators, historians and conservation scientists. This project resulted in publications (9), and conference presentations (13), and supported two PhDs Thesis. More importantly, it resulted in the disclosure and exhibition of this collection, ensuring its valorisation and appreciation by present and future generations. In 2011 I was appointed Director of the Research Unit VICARTE. VICARTE is devoted to trans-disciplinary research applied to glass and ceramics, focusing on where art and science intersect, and stimulating the sharing of knowledge, experiences and methodologies. As coordinator of the RU, I was responsible for the evaluation and preparation of the strategic plan for 2015-2019 and 2020-2024, which resulted in a rating of Excellent and an annual budget three times higher than the previous one. Since 2021 VICARTE is part of Associated Laboratory LAQV. In 2019, I was appointed as the Head of DCR. DCR has a unique profile of expertise in conservation science and technical art history (among other conservation research fields) and, as part of a vast national and international network, is in a singular position embedded in a School of Science and Technology to influence the future of heritage conservation. In 2018 I started the first study on the making of hand-painted magic lantern slides, linking the critical analysis of historical written sources on the methods and materials used to produce painted glass slides and the chemical characterisation of coeval historical glass slides, with promising results. To date, I have supervised MSc and PhD students (11+7), co-authored 2 books and 11 book chapters, as well as +100 scientific papers and conferences proceeding with peer review. I have participated in conferences as an invited speaker (11), and in oral presentations and posters (+70). In developing my research, I have established collaborations, in particular with the University of Arts of London, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht as partners of the European Funded, ARTECHNE project, Imperial College of London, the Institute de Recherche sur les ArchéoMATériaux, CNRS, France, the Vitrocentre Romont, Switzerland, and in Portugal, the Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Direcção Geral do Património Cultural, Parques de Sintra-Monte da Lua, SA, and the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.