Ivana Jarak obtained a Ph.D. in the field of Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, University of Zagreb, Croatia, where she became an expert in the methods of organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry, as well as supramolecular and biopolymer chemistry. She also gained insight into molecular biology approaches related to the research of drug activity mechanisms and developed a strong interest in an interdisciplinary approach to drug development. In 2007, she moved to a new research centre (Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra) and became interested in metabolism and the elucidation of metabolic pathway fluxes under various therapeutic interventions. During my post-doctoral studies at the University of Aveiro, I got the opportunity to learn new techniques and concepts in metabolome research based on the omics approach and the use of machine learning methods for the analysis of high-throughput data. Since then, she has successfully applied the knowledge acquired in metabolomics to the analysis of diverse biological matrices acquired from various cellular and animal models, as well as those obtained from human clinical studies. Her research interests in that period also led to several relevant publications related to metabolic engineering in cancer cell metabolism and tumor growth, and the toxicology of nanoparticles in cell and animal models. In 2018, she was given the opportunity to apply the expertise she gained in various research areas to the field of nanomedicine and dedicate her full research focus to the use of block copolymers and micellar systems in cancer pathologies related to osteosarcoma by joining the project Novel therapeutic strategy for osteosarcoma combining polyplexes and polymeric micelles (Faculty of Pharmacy, UC). Since then, she has dedicated her research efforts to the design and synthesis of complex nanosystems and the exploration of their interactions with small molecule drugs and biomolecules (plasmid DNA and short-chained RNAs), as a means for improvement of the overall performance of therapeutic molecules. Apart from the development of drug delivery formulations for cancer therapy, she is applying metabolomics in elucidation of the biological effects of polymer-based nanocarriers and their possible influence on the therapeutic activity of their load. During the last five years, she has gained funding as a co-PI of the recently finished project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Multifunctional cell membrane-camouflaged polymeric micelles for combination therapy of colorectal cancer, 2021-2025). The development of cationic block polymers for miRNA delivery within the funded nanotechnology projects resulted in the patent application (PCT/IB2025/057358). In the past five years, she mentored three M.Sc. students and several undergraduate and Erasmus interns. She serves as a reviewer for international peer-reviewed journals in the fields of nanotechnology, drug development, and metabolism. Throughout her scientific activity, she has established collaborations with other research groups located at the University of Coimbra and other national and international universities. She has published more than 90 peer-reviewed publications and has presented her work at more than 50 scientific conferences.