Mariana Emilia Ghica is an Assistant Researcher at University of Coimbra, Chemical Engineering and Renewable Resources for Sustainability (CERES) in the Design of Functional Materials group. She published 61 articles in international peer review journals and 1 book chapter, several of them through collaboration with researchers from 13 countries from Europe, Africa and South America. MEG established/consolidated collaboration with universities: U. Hassan II (Morocco), U. West Cape (South Africa), UFSCar (Brazil), U. Teramo/U. Tor Vergata (Italy), U. Bucharest/U. Brasov (Romania) and institutes: ICECHIM (Romania), IAPS-LU (Latvia), Fraunhofer IKTS (Germany), ICTM (Serbia) during her scientific visit/work in the abroad laboratories or foreign students exchange in her laboratory, as well as through writing proposals for transnational calls. These collaborations led to increase her international visibility, actually achieving a h-index of 35 (Web of Science, Scopus). Additionally, 1 of her articles was quoted by Web of Science as highly cited article (DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2015.02.059) and 1 article (DOI: 10.1002/elan.202100164) received a PRECISI2021 award from UEFISCDI (Romania). MEG co-authored over 100 communications in (inter)national conferences, including oral communications, invited talks, keynotes and posters. MEG strongly contributed to attract competitive funding related with her research area; overall, participated as active team member in 12 projects: 6 FCT, 2 EU, 2 EU-IRSES (local responsible), 1 P2020, 1 Joint Research. MEG was/is an Invited Assistant Professor at UC to teach "General Chemistry" and "Biomaterials" classes for Master students and she has actively collaborated in the laboratory teaching and problem classes of the disciplines "Electrochemistry and Corrosion" and "Nanotechnologies" that are part of the Masters in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the UC. She attracted students to work with her, being (co)supervisor of 1 postdoc, 11 PhD, 11 MSc and 3 BSc, among them 13 being international. MEG actively served as referee of 25 journals from Elsevier, RSC, Springer, Taylor&Francis, Wiley, MDPI; is "Electrochemistry" section board Editor and Guest Editor of 2 special issues in Molecules journal (concerning electrochemical nanostructured platforms and aerogels). She also collaborated as Project Evaluator for UEFISCDI. MEG was involved in science promotion and dissemination "Summer University", "European Night of Researchers" and in outreach activities: laboratory management (responsible); organization of 1 training school (Cost Action CA18125 AERoGELS) and 2 nat./int. meetings; she was jury member of 3 MSc thesis and 1 PhD thesis; an invited chair in international conferences (ANM 2019, Smart Diaspora 2023, SPE2023). Her research interests are focused on the development of novel nanostructured materials, their characterization and applications. She has prepared different nanomaterials, such as modified electrodes with carbon nanotubes, graphene, quantum dots, metallic nanoparticles (iron and gold) and silica and alumina-silica aerogel composites reinforced with aramid (nano)fibres. The electrodes modified by nanostructures were applied in food, clinical and environmental fields. The reinforced aerogels are aimed for thermal insulation applications for buildings and Space environment; environmental remediation, as well as biomedical applications are also envisaged by other aerogels-like nanomaterials. Mariana Emilia Ghica has gathered experience in using different techniques and results interpretation by electrochemistry (cyclic, differential and square wave voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, quartz crystal microbalance), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), wet contact angle (WCA), mechanical tests by compression, bending and tensile, thermal conductivity, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).