João M. M. Rodrigues is an Assistant Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, and has been working in the fields of Chemistry and Biomaterials since joining the COMPASS Research Group in 2017. He started his academic journey with a graduation in Industrial Chemistry at University of Coimbra in 2007. Then in University of Aveiro (UA), he completed his MSc degree in 2010, in Organic Chemistry. In 2012 he was granted with a FCT PhD Fellowship where he enrolled in the Chemistry doctoral plan under the supervision of Professors João Tomé and José Cavaleiro. His PhD (2012-2015) research plan was focused on Organic and Supramolecular Chemistry. He also had the opportunity to expand his knowledge by become a visiting PhD student at Kyoto University, Japan, under the supervision of Professor Takashi Morii. After concluding his PhD, he moved to UK in 2016 for a Postdoctoral Research Assistant position at University of Hull under the supervision of Professor Ross Boyle. In 2017 he joined the COMPASS Research Group, from top level CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials at UA, as a Junior Research Fellow. Joining the COMPASS RG, led by Prof. João Mano, he has been making use of his consolidated knowledge in Organic and Supramolecular Chemistry to perform research in the modification and functionalization of polysaccharides and proteins to be used in functional biomaterials for biomedical applications, such as tissue bone regeneration. In 2018, he was granted with the FCT project COP2P (PTDC/QUI-QOR/30771/2017) where he was Principal Investigator (233 k€), and with BLUEGLUE project (FA_05_2017_031) in which he was in the Core-Team (200 k€). In the meantime, he is research member of other ongoing projects, all related with biomedical applications. He has published 1 book chapter and 33 peer-reviewed papers in high impact international journals (88% of his papers were published in Q1 journals), summing 544 citations and an h-index 12, and is inventor in 3 patents. He reviewed articles for several international journals relevant for his field, Sens. Actuators B, Acta Biomater, Adv. Mater., Adv. Mater. Bio.. He was also Guest-Editor of two special issues ("Marine Drugs" and "Polymers" journals). He has been enthusiastic to attend highly recognized scientific meetings, with 10 oral talk (2 invited) and poster (>30) presentations. He has been involved in the organization of scientific events, the most recent one was “SupraLife Third School” (https://www.supralife.eu/thirdschool/) (2025) (Organizing committee) . JR has been actively working in the preparation of competitive national/international proposals, such as ERC-Consolidation grants (helped in the preparation of a winner proposal - REBORN (Ref. 883370 ERC-2019-ADG)), ETN-Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN, COST Actions, FET Flagships and FCT projects. His interesses are focused on the processing natural polymer-based materials into high-added value biomedical devices to decisively contribute for positioning CICECO at an international competitive level in this field.