Maria Teresa Duarte is presently Head of the Chemical Engineering Department, at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa. She is a Chemical Engineer and did her PhD and Habilitation in Chemistry becoming a Full Professor in 2014, at the same University. From 2016-2020 she was Non-Executive Member of the Administration Council of A3ES, the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education in Portugal. She is a Fulbright Fellow, an Alexander von Humboldt grantee, and Fellow at IAS Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. In 2004, she received a prize from the Portuguese Agency of Science and Technology, “Estímulo à Excelência” awarded for high scientific productivity. In 2016 she was elected as one of the "100 Women in Science" in Portugal. She is Coordinator of the Group on “Design, synthesis, and toxicology of bioactive molecules” at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE), (Research Center grade – Excellent). She has coordinated 12 research Projects and is/was a member of more than 30 including the COST Action MECHSUSTIND “Mechanochemistry for Sustainable Energy”. She is the leader in Portugal of the recently approved Horizon Europe project IMPACTIVE “Innovative Mechanochemical Processes to synthesize green ACTIVE pharmaceutical ingredients” starting October 2022. She co-authored 247 papers in International Journals with peer review (> 5,414 citations and h-index 40). She presented more than 250 communications at International Conferences, supervised 30 post docs, PhD and MSC students and other students in different research projects. She has organized and acted as member of the Scientific/Organization Committee of several International Conferences and Workshops and chaired diverse scientific sessions. She a referee member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the American Chemical Society. At present she is the president of the Portuguese delegation to the International Union of Crystallography (IUCR) and the Portuguese representative to the European Crystallographic Association (ECA). She is co-chair of ECA SIG on Molecular Structures and Chemical Properties, and chair of the 7th European Crystallographic School, held in Lisbon, July 2022. She created the X-ray diffraction facility at CQE IST, which she has been coordinating and upgrading. The facility is nowadays the largest in Portugal for the use of single crystal and powder diffraction techniques. Studies on structure-properties relationship have been since her PhD the area of main scientific activity of M. Teresa Duarte. She has for long been involved in the structural characterization of organic, coordination and organometallic compounds aiming to correlate structure-property behavior in different functional materials. More recently her interests have turned to the use of Crystal Engineering principles and supramolecular synthesis to design and synthesize active pharmaceutical molecules (API) with enhanced properties. Cocrystallization is being used to obtain new formulations (salts, solvates, cocrystals) more stable to moisture and temperature, with higher solubility and activity. API polymorphism is also a major area of interest. Ionic Liquids are being used to control and avoid polymorphism. Still searching for API new and stable forms, a novel approach was developed, the synthesis and characterization of bioinspired Metalo Organic Frameworks, BioMOFs, using safe metal ions and active biomolecules as spacers or guests. These systems are being designed for application in drug storage and delivery. This is a possible way to avoid the secondary toxic effects of using exogenous linkers and also to avoid the burst effect due to immediate release. Besides conventional solution and solvothermal synthetic techniques, new green synthetic techniques such as mechanochemistry is being intensively used. Different techniques are being used in the characterization of the products obtained, with special relevance for X-ray diffraction.