Bárbara B. Mendes obtained a BsC in Biomedical Sciences (2012) from Beira Interior University and a MsC in Biomedical Engineering (2014) from University of Oporto. In July 2020, Bárbara B. Mendes successfully defended her PhD on Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials from 3B's group at Minho University in collaboration with Prof. Jason Burdick at University of Pennsylvania (USA). She have acquired expertise on engineering intrinsically bioactive biomaterials as mimics of the native extracellular matrix. At the moment, the main outcomes of her research work are (1) throve blood derivatives-based biomaterials as modular extracellular matrix-mimetic scaffolds; (2) exploited human-based nanocomposite systems to meet personalized and complex 3D in vitro models conferring tissue-specific roles to the engineered scaffolds. In particular, hierarchical fibrillar network, mechanical properties (e.g., through cellulose nanocrystals content variation), and protein-engineered microenvironment (e.g., via native cell binding motifs and/or selective presentation of platelet derived-proteins). At her current postdoc fellowship, she has been profiling breast tumor heterogeneity in a cell-by-cell approach by designing logic synthetic gene circuits as a biobarcode of multicolor RNA circuits that will be efficient delivered to breast tumor microenvironment using bioresponsive nanohydrogels. The developed platform will be explored to evaluate pre-clinical nanomedicine therapy outcomes in a patient-by-patient basis. As a PhD student, she published 10 articles (6 as first-author) in renowned peer-reviewed journals (Biofabrication, Acta Biomaterialia, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews), 1 book chapter, 1 international patent granted, and she orally presented in the most important conferences of the field, such as BMES'19, ESB'18, and TERMIS'17. As a junior researcher, from Oct 2020, she published 12 papers (7 as first author, 1 as corresponding author – ALL INDEPENDENT of her PhD collaborators, 2 papers just accepted); 2 journal covers; 3 patents (2 patents submitted, 1 in preparation); I presented 1 invited-talk; 1 invited-workshop; and 3 oral presentations with 73 citations. She is co-supervisor of 1 BSc, 1 MSc, and 1 PhD student (2nd year). She acquired animal FELASA certification (2022). She is a team member in EIC project (€2.5 M) and ERC ‘GelGeneCircuit’ project (€1.5 M). Finally, she is the PI of a FCT-funded exploratory project (€50 K) on 3D lung cancer models (2023). From July 2023 to December 2023, she was in maternity leave. Her h-index is 12/13 (Scopus/Scholar) with over 632/773citations (Scopus/Scholar) - Updated at 16.04.2024.