Sandra started her career with a BSc in Chemistry (2008, Univ. of Coimbra, PT) with specialization in chemistry of biological processes, during which she was granted an Erasmus Mundus fellowship, to do part of her studies at the Univ. of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Here she worked on the synthesis of chelating agents for heavy metal poisoning therapies. She studied a MSc in Organic Chemistry (2010) at the same university, where she started working on the field of organic synthesis applied to the dendritic polymers under the supervision of Dr. E. Fernandez Megía and Prof. R. Riguera. During this time she developed an optimised and scaled-up synthesis of the repeating unit of GATG dendrimers based on green chemistry and atom economy principles. Along with this project she also worked on the preparation of two different families of high generation GATG dendrimers, which have shown excellent results in several biomedical applications. During this time she published an article (Org. Lett. 2011; Q1; IF 6.49), a patent [P201030966 (ES)], 2 oral and 2 poster communications. Afterwards she started the PhD within the same research group (2011, CIQUS/USC) where she got involved in more multidisciplinary projects also including the synthesis of dendrimers but also PEGylated linear and dendritic block-copolymers, including an accelerated synthesis of biodegradable structures prepared using microwave synthesis, click chemistry, and green chemistry principals (article in preparation). The synthesised polymers were used to prepare drug delivery systems (DDS) at the nanoscale such as polymeric micelles and polymersomes with sensitivity to external stimuli such as pH, ionic strength or concentration of bioactive compounds with particular chemical structures. Moreover, she has also worked on the encapsulation of different commercial pharmaceutical drugs such as anticancer agents. She has performed in vitro DD studies and cell experiments to study the internalisation ability of these DDS using fluorescence and confocal microscopy as well as cytotoxicity assays. In collaboration with the Dr. J. Costas and Dr. A. Vidal (CIMUS, USC) they have demonstrated the importance of the size of the DDS in their in vivo biodistribution. This work granted the publication of one very good article (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 2018; Q1; IF 12.1), 2 oral and 2 poster communications, and another article in preparation. Furthermore, in an international collaboration with the Prof. Cameron Alexander (Univ. of Nottingham, UK), they have shown the ability of the polymers developed by her to mediate clustering of bacteria and act as microbicides (Biomaterials Science 2016; Q1; IF 5.8). Before defending the PhD (2017), she moved to the UK where she was part of the science start-up incubator Deep Science Ventures (DSV), which explores science-related ideas from a commercial perspective. Her tasks within the company were to work along other scientists, engineers and business consultants to explore science-related ideas from a commercial perspective, covering areas such as health, sustainability and development of cutting-edge biomaterials. One of the main projects she was involved, focused on the redesign and functionalization of current cellulosic textile fibres for maximization of functions such as fire resistance and recyclability enhancement. After finishing the PhD she decided to take a sabbatical year to work on a non-science related area, and finally, in June 2019 she returned to her home country to start a Postdoc position at ICVS/3B’s research group (Univ. do Minho, PT), which focus on biopolymers, biomimetics and biodegradables for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. Here she currently works along with Dr. Ramón and Dr. Iva Pashkuleva on the synthesis of proteoglycan mimetics for the development of brush-like glycosaminoglycan (GAG) copolymer hydrogels, for the reconstruction of cartilage nanostructures.