Maria João Álvaro-Martins is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon. She earned her PhD in Bioengineering, from the University Miguel Hernández of Elche, Spain, in 2021. She completed her undergraduate and master’s studies in Chemistry at the University of Lisbon in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Her PhD research focused on developing novel diketopyrrolopyrroles (DPPs) as active layers in organic solar cells. During this time, she was awarded a Generalitat Valenciana grant (BEFPI 2020) to work as a visiting researcher at IECB and ISM in Bordeaux, where she explored chirality induction from silica nanostructures to DPP derivatives. Following her PhD, she joined ISM in Bordeaux as a postdoctoral fellow (2021-2023) to advance research on chiral systems with enhanced circularly polarized luminescence values and investigate vertical charge mobility in self-assembled monolayers of helical foldamer molecules. Her academic contributions include 11 research papers, with 6 as first-author publications, one book chapter, and numerous presentations at national and international conferences. Maria has significant supervision experience, mentoring one BSc and three MSc students. She also served as an assistant professor at IST, teaching Structural and Analytical Methods at the MSc level. Currently, her main scientific interests are organic synthesis to improve optical properties for several applications. More precisely: Synthesis and characterization of small molecules for bioimaging. Design of new hybrid materials based on silica nanoparticles. Synthesis of polymers and functional nanomaterials for bioimaging.