In 2019, Catarina Passos completed her BSc degree in Biology (final grade of 15) at the University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal (PT). During this period, she gathered knowledge in diverse biology fields, namely microbiology, ecology, physiology, molecular biology and genetics, among others. In the internship carried out during the last BSc year, she developed expertise in isolation and characterization of human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly-derived mesenchymal stem cells, acquiring basic skills to maintain and preserve primary cell culture lines. Also, she attended an advanced course in fundamentals of animal and cell culture, sponsored by CESAM in the Biology Department, at UA. Afterwards, she enrolled in Biotechnology MSc at the same institution, aiming to complement her background in Biology with knowledge in transdisciplinary areas, including materials science, chemistry, and biomedical engineering. In the scope of her Master thesis (concluded in December 2021), she developed the scientific work entitled "Biofunctionalized liquefied capsules as three-dimensional basement membranes to promote vascularization and tissue integration", being awarded a final grade of 17/20. The innovative feature of this work has recently led to a currently pending national patent. During this work, she acquired expertise and know-how on biomaterial processing (layer-by-layer and electrohydrodynamic atomization) and characterization techniques (FTIR-ATR, DLS, zeta potential, SEM, CLSM), as well as biological assays (in vitro cell culture, MTS, DNA quantification, fluorescence microscopy, CAM model). Since February 2022, she has had a fellow grant in the scope of the project "TETRISSUE - Bioinspired tile-matching to create ultrastructured bone microtissues in a close-to-native fashion", financed by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. She also has a submitted article to the journal "Advanced NanoBiomed Research" as an author under the title "Patterned mussel-inspired freestanding membranes as efficient delivery device of therapeutic stem cells for cartilage repair", where the team developed nanopatterned DOPA-HA membrane surfaces (using layer-by-layer technique on nanopatterned substrates, characterized morphologically by AFM, SEM and degradation assays) that showed successful cell adhesion, migration, and retention at the cartilage surface (issued by in vitro cell culture studies, ex vivo assays on damaged cartilages and azan staining analysis). Therefore, having a great impact on strategies for cell delivery vehicles on cell-based therapies in the near future. She also presented a poster on this work at the conference “SUPRALIFE First School 2023”. During this time, she also enrolled in a non-degree course, “Advanced Course in Scientific Research”, that encompassed enhancing her skills in writing and presenting scientific results to the scientific community and society in general and experiencing integrating in teams led by experienced researchers, around research and innovation problems, typically funded in a competitive context and often in collaboration with other national and international research or business entities to produce and present a research work. This course covered the programs: (i) Integrated Sustainable Development Following the UN Goals for 2030; (ii) Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods; (iii) Solutions for Sustainable Manufacturing and Technologies for Well-being; and (iv)Research Internship. Her proficiency encompasses stem cells combined with low-based biomaterials for tissue engineering applications.