Between 2010 and 2014, I attended the University of Leicester in the UK where I completed an MChem degree in Chemistry with a Year in Industry with first class honours. During this degree, I spent 14 months as a placement student with the Science and Technology Facilities Council at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Didcot, Oxford (UK), working in the Central Laser Facility. After this, I started a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Vasilios G. Stavros at the University of Warwick. My thesis, titled 'Ultrafast Photoprotection mechanisms: expediting the molecular design of sunscreen agents' was awarded the 2018 Science Faculty Thesis Prize. I was a Marie Curie Research Fellow (2020-2022) at Lipotec, part of The Lubrizol Corporation, in Barcelona (Spain), working on my proposed project 'Novel Photoprotective Cosmetics: From Fundamental Science to Product'. This project focused on applying the fundamental knowlege I gathered during my PhD to final product and to the suncare industry. Currently, I am a researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon (Portugal), still working on the interactions between light and matter to inform novel product development. As a scientist and researcher, I am fascinated by the interactions between light and matter, which is what has lead me to become an expert in state-of-the-art laser spectroscopy methods. For me, the most thrilling part of being a scientist is the cross-referencing of interdisciplinary sources to find the key questions that will lead to ground-breaking science. I am a 'big picture' scientist, who seeks to 'zoom-out' to see the wider implications of my research and then pursue transformative translational research. I am also a strong believer in the democratization of science. This implies a strong commitment to contributing to a diverse scientific community, but also to helping science overflow the boundaries of knowledge production centres into the wider society. I believe people should be able not only to access scientific information but also to navigate it and use it to make truly informed decisions. As a result, I am a keen communicator and an award-winning teacher.