I am a Research Fellow at the Food Behaviour Lab of CATÓLICA-LISBON School of Business & Economics since 2024. I work as a consumer behaviour researcher in the In2Market Work Package of the InsectERA Mobilizing Agenda. In this project, I have the opportunity to collaborate with food companies along the value chain and participate in their decisions regarding the design of new insect-based foods, especially in what respects their sensory characteristics. In this role, I was invited to speak about the challenges and opportunities faced by insect-based foods, as they try to penetrate Western markets and gain consumer acceptance, at an event organized by IACA (Portuguese Association of Compound Feed Industry) named “Insects: the protein of the future?” and in an interview for Voz do Campo, a trade magazine. I was awarded a MSc. in Food Engineering (2024) and a BSc. in Bioengineering (Ano?) by Escola Superior de Biotecnologia – Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto, Portugal, both with a classification of 17/20. My academic performance earned me consecutive merit scholarships that allowed me to self-fund my entire education. Moreover, I completed my MSc. Dissertation (ano?) on the Food Safety Attributes of Onshore Cultivated Macroalgae and Jellyfish at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy (ATB) in Germany. I have participated in several research projects throughout my academic journey. Namely, I worked as Research Assistant in SUSINCHAIN – SUStainable Insect CHAIN, an EU-funded international project where I had the opportunity to investigate consumer preferences for plant- and insect-based meat substitutes by supporting the performance of sensory analysis and consumer tests. As a co-author, I published this work in Journal of Insects as Food and Feed and presented it at the SUSINCHAIN Final Symposium in the Netherlands. I have also been involved in the organization of science dissemination events, such as the Jornadas de Biotecnologia (2021-2023) and the Biotechnology Innovation Forum (2021-2023). My current research interests focus on how consumers evaluate the sensory profile of novel foods and their acceptance, with a growing interest in multisensory integration as a tool for understanding the full human experience in connection with its sensory food environment.