Maria Manuel B. Marques is Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Chemistry Department, School of Science and Technology , NOVA University of Lisbon (FCT-NOVA) and member of LAQV-Requimte. She graduated in Chemistry from FCT-NOVA in 1995 and secured a PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2001, under the supervision of Prof S. Prabhakar at NOVA University of Lisbon. In 2001 she moved to a postdoctoral position with Prof Mulzer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry (Vienna University - Austria). During this period, she worked in a total synthesis project. In May 2003 she became Assistant Researcher at REQUIMTE (FCT-NOVA) - leading institution for the development of Sustainable Chemistry, and Invited Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Department, FCT-NOVA (2004-2018). In 2016 she got the Habilitation in Chemistry and in 2018 she became Assistant Professor at FCT-NOVA. Maria Manuel B. Marques is enrolled in the teaching of several disciplines that range from organic chemistry, to reaction mechanisms, medicinal chemistry and sustainable synthesis and catalysis, from all cycles - 1st cycle to the PhD program. She started her independent research career at FCT-NOVA in 2006 and established her own research line Organic Synthesis and Chemical Biology. In 2024 she became Associate Professor. Her research interests are focused on the interface between chemistry and biology, in particular the development of novel sustainable synthetic methodologies, metal-catalyzed reactions for the synthesis and functionalization of bioactive compounds. Her research aims at developing new approaches to address challenging synthetic problems in the synthesis of biological and pharmacological important molecules, including heterocyclic molecules and carbohydrates to understand biological systems. A contribution from her team in the field of carbohydrate chemistry was the un unprecedented approach towards oligosaccharides containing N-acetylglucosamine-N-acetylmuramic (NAG-NAM) units. These novel bacterial cell wall surrogates were obtained from chitosan via a top down approach involving both chemical and enzymatic reactions. These oligosaccharides mimic the carbohydrate basic skeleton of most bacterial cell surfaces are biologically relevant and will serve as a platform for further molecular recognition studies, with different receptors and enzymes of both bacterial cell wall and innate immune system. Recent highlights of her research team rely on the development of novel routes to access heterocycles, such as azaindoles, by metal-catalyzed reactions, that opened a fast and elegant access to this challenging class of compounds. This work was highlighted in Organic Process and Research Development, by a group of industrial chemists with a strong interest in practical chemistry that addresses and solves industrial questions. The results were published in high impact scientific journals and further disseminated in several international conferences. Currently she is dedicated to the development of novel metal-catalyzed strategies to address synthetic challenges associated with the synthesis of difficult to make molecules, crucial for drug discovery and development processes. To date, she has supervised PhD students (8 concluded), MSc students (24 concluded), and mentored 3 Postdocs. She was Principal Investigator in 5 competitive funding calls: 2022.04623.PTDC; PTDC/QUI-QOR/0712/2020; PTDC/QEQ-QOR/2132/2012; PTDC/QUI/65187/2006; bilateral collaboration Portugal-Germany (DAAD). She published 68 papers in peer-reviewed journals (84% as corresponding author) and 4 book chapters with a total of more than 1630 citations (h-index 21, scopus), besides 40 invited lectures and oral communications in national and international conferences (18).