Sónia Gonçalves is a senior researcher at the Biomembranes and Nanomedicine group led by Nuno C. Santos at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM, since 2008) and a researcher at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon (2005). Sónia has a strong technical background in biophysics with applications in microbiology. The purpose of Sónia's research is to transpose scientific knowledge into medicinal applications to combat the widespread prevalence of infectious diseases. She has developed her research in the field of antimicrobials, in particular a new generation of antimicrobials isolated from animals and plants. Over the last 5 years, Sónia has focused on the study of the biochemical and biophysical processes that occur at the membrane level of human cells and bacterial pathogens. She has focused on four molecules as antimicrobial agents in bacterial cells. These peptides have shown enhanced inhibitory activity against some ESKAPE pathogens with alterations at the membrane level. She specializes in the examination of bacterial membranes, which help to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance and how diseases spread. In the field of nanotechnology/nanomedicine, Sónia has implemented the synthesis of star-shape nanoparticles and its conjugation with AMPs to improve its selectivity and sensitivity in combating resistant bacterial infections. At the same time, she studies the changes in mechanical properties induced by these small molecules in the bacterial membrane using techniques such as fluorescence, dynamic light scattering, confocal microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). She is the Principal Investigator of an FCT-PEX founded project (FCT 2022.01991.PTDC; DOI 10.54499/2022.01991.PTDC), which aims to develop nano-based antimicrobial strategies to prevent prosthetic joint infections. She was also a team member of the BIOCOLOUR project (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-068924), which exploited microbial pigments for sustainable applications in textiles. At this moment Sónia participates as a team member in two founded projects: IMPLAT, the development of a single-cell platform to validate material scaffolds and drugs for the enhanced osteointegration of biomedical implants and COLOR2COAT (CI23-10134/La Caixa Foundation), development of nano-coatings for prosthetics based on microbial phenazines conjugated with silver nanostars. As a result, she has extensive knowledge of microbiology and analytical methods for characterizing microbial cells in biotech, environmental, and biomedical settings. During pandemics, Sónia participates in various national and international collaborative projects with industry to test the potentialities of UV light as antibacterial agent. She is (co-)author of more than 55 peer-reviewed publications, (co-)author of 2 book chapters, editor of 3 special issues (published by Wiley and Springer), oral communications, and 45 posters in international conferences. She has been a supervisor of Ph.D. and MSc theses. She works with foreign researchers in Brazil, Argentina, and Spain, as well as in Portugal at the Universidade de Aveiro and, more recently, the Universidade do Porto.