Dr Bernardes graduated in Biological Engineering (MSc) in 2008 at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) (16/20), during which he visited the Molecular Cell Biology Lab at KULeuven (Belgium) for his final MSc Dissertation (20/20). In 2013, he obtained his PhD in Biotechnology at IST (Pass with Distinction), in collaboration with IPATIMUP, Porto. His PhD studies focused on the use of azurin as an anticancer protein for aggressive breast cancer which overexpressed P-cadherin. Since 2014 until November 2018, as a post-doc in the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB) and IPATIMUP/i3S he expanded his studies to the effects of azurin at lipid raft microdomains which function as platforms for protein receptors to influence intra-cellular signaling and the response to anti-cancer drugs. In 2018, Dr Bernardes signed a research contract as Researcher at iBB-IST to focus on developing (i) protein- and peptide-based strategies to enhance targeted delivery of nanosized drug delivery systems, and (ii) engineered cell-based therapies for cancer with clinically relevant therapeutic cells. In 2019, he joined the Department of Bioengineering at IST as Invited Assistant Professor, teaching Genetic Engineering, Molecular Biotechnology, and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of the Cell to 1st and 2nd degrees. He has (co-)authored 28 records (in Web of Science, H-index 13) (in the last 5 years total of 16, 3 as co-corresponding author, 4 book chapters and 1 national patent granted). In the last 5 years, he (co-)supervised 8 MSC thesis and 2 PhD thesis (one as Main Supervisor). He was member of the team of 5 FCT-funded projects with a total funding > 1M¿. As PI, he gathered 35.5 k¿ to study new approaches to develop new therapies for cancer. In 2016, he was awarded a Travel Grant from Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds to attend the ¿Genome Engineering: CRIPRS/Cas9 course at EMBL. He was awarded the EACR Best Poster ASPIC 2018. He has reviewed for national funding agencies (ANI) and journals (Molecular Therapy, Cancer Nanotechnology, Cell Cycle, IJMS, Cells, Cancers), and was external examiner for 26 MSc and 2 PhD theses. He is intensively involved in communication of science to lay audiences, namely he regularly gives talks for high school students in Open Labs from DBE@IST, and chaired session in events organized by the student community, namely the Bioengineering week at IST and the session dedicated to the challenges and ethical limits of genetic manipulation in the conference Engineering to the Limits (May 2021) organized by the Students Association of IST. He was also member of the Organization Committee of the 1st iBB Workshop - Fostering collaborative research (Oct 29th 2019). During the COVID19 pandemic, Dr Bernardes joined the iBB Taskforce which implemented and certified the iBB-CTN Covid testing Lab, assisting in the efforts to provide COVID tests (in the times they were scarce) mainly to elderly facilities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. He provided scientific supervision and coordinated the volunteers¿ teams who performed the tests. In 2021, he visited the Rhoades Lab, at the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright Visiting Researcher (Scholarship awarded by the Portugal Fulbright Committee), where he received training in proximity labeling and advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques and data analysis applied to protein and peptide delivery techniques.