I carried out my PhD thesis work under the supervision of Dr. John Cooper at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado in the area of far-wing spectroscopy of atomic collisions in the gas phase. I then worked to develop various four-wave mixing technique to study gas phase collisions with Professor Paul Ewart at the University of Oxford as well as on the generation and characterization of non-classical states of light with Professor Michael Raymer at the University of Oregon. In 1992 I established my own research group at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. Here I have worked primarily as an experimentalist focusing in several different areas, including dynamic light scattering, the development and characterization of non-linear optical materials, characterization of textiles using coherent optical techniques, cold atomic gases (in collaboration with Professor Alain Aspect's group) the propagation of light in random scattering media, implementations of quality control measures using optical metrology in collaboration with Bosch, super-resolution microscopy techniques, and most recently developing ultra-fast nonlinear spectroscopic techniques to study the dynamics of energy transfer in complex environments.