Full Professor at Dep. Chemistry, University of Aveiro, Portugal, ex-Director (2002-2021) of CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials ( ca. 480 people), and Coordinator of the Council of Associated Laboratories. Ph.D. in 1991 from the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, followed by a post-doc in the same department. Published >540 research papers and 5 patents, which received GOOGLE SCHOLAR >29,000 citations and h=81 (SCOPUS 24,000 citations, h-index 71). Gave >250 talks at conferences; and supervised 43 post-docs and 36 PhD students. Member of European Academy of Sciences (EURASC), Académie Royal de Belgique, Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and of the ChemPubSoc Europe. Received the French-Portuguese prize from the Société Chimique de France, Madinabeitia-Lourenço award from the Real Sociedad Española de Química, the prizes Romão Dias, and Ferreira da Silva (Portuguese Chemical Society), and the prize for Scientific Excellence of the Portuguese Science Foundation. He was Chair of the 'Commission on Inorganic and Mineral Structures' and consultant of the 'Commission on NMR Crystallography and Related Methods' of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). He Chairs ERC Consolidator Grants Panel P11 (Materials Engineering). Member of the editorial boards of Chemistry - a European Journal, and was on the editorial boards of EurJIC, Solid State NMR, Solid State Sciences, and editor of the RSC Nanoscience and Nanotechnology book series. -----PRESENT RESEARCH INTERESTS----- Microporous transition metal and lanthanide (Ln) silicates, photoluminescent Ln-bearing materials, and Metal Organic Frameworks for sensing applications, including nanothermometry. Organic-inorganic hybrid ferroelectrics. Nanosystems for multimodal imaging, therapy and drug delivery. Solid-state NMR. X-ray diffraction. -----MAIN SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS ---- A) Created a field of materials akin to zeolites: microporous transition metal and Ln silicates (ca. 100 novel Ti, Zr, V, Nb, Cu, Sn, Ca, Y, Ce and Ln silicates - AV and AM materials). Archetypal solid is titanium silicate ETS-10 (Nature, 367: 347, 1994). Explored applications in luminescence (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 137: 3051, 2015), catalysis, gas sorption and separation, ion exchange, magnetism, as MRI contrast agents and in pharma. B) Designed photoresponsive crystalline organic-inorganic hybrid ferroelectrics with a high Curie temperature (423 K) (J. Am. Chem. Soc.,142: 16990, 2020, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 145: 13663, 2023. C) Developed luminescent Ln-bearing Metal Organic Frameworks and coordination polymers (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 47: 1080, 2008), in particular for nanothermometry (Adv. Funct. Mater., 25: 2824, 2015). D) Developed oxide nanoparticles for imaging contrast agents (ACS Nano, 4: 5339, 2010), bimodal imaging (Biomater., 33: 925, 2012), and thermometry (Nature Nanotech, 11: 851, 2016; Adv. Mater., 35: 4868, 2013). E) Designed materials for small-drugs release (including NO, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 133: 6396, 2011). F) Devised materials for a more sustainable World (including anti-mosquito nets, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 9: 22112, 2017; and uranyl capture Angew. Chem., Intl. Ed., 58: 1, 2019). G) Designed (ca. 40) heterogeneous catalysts based on mesoporous silicas derivatized with metal complexes (J. Mater. Chem., 12: 1735, 2002). H) Elucidated the structure of minerals by NMR and XRD (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 114: 6867, 1992; Am. Mineral., 103: 812, 2018). I) Pioneered development of solid-state NMR techniques for studying quadrupolar nuclei (Solid State NMR, 21: 61, 2002; Magn. Reson. Chem., 41: 679, 2003) and 1H (J. Mag. Reson., 199: 111, 2009). ------SOCIETAL IMPACT------ Microporous zirconium silicate AV-13 (Inorg. Chim Acta, 356: 19, 2003), slightly modified, was exploited (Rocha consultant) by AstraZeneca) to treat hyperkalemia (excess K+ in serum). New drug Lokelma, approved by FDA and EMA, is on the market.