Ricardo Alexandre Rodrigues Pires finished his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering in 2004/12/09 by the Technical University of Lisbon, Technical Superior Institute and the graduation in Technological Chemistry in 1998/12/01 by the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Sciences. He is Principal Investigator from the University of Minho, President of the Council of the Unit I3Bs and member of the Academic Senate of the University of Minho. He published 72 papers in international scientific journals , 9 book chapters and he registered 4 patents. He supervised 15 students/researchers at different (post-)graduation level, including: 4 PhD and 2 MSc thesis. He participates or participated as a researcher in different scientific/industrial projects with a budget of ~8.5M€ (Host)/~18M€ (Total). His research is centred in the field of Materials Science and Engineering applied to the biomedical field, in particular in the areas of Neurosciences, Bionanotechnology e Biochemistry. During his research activities he interacted with 150 collaborators in co-autorships of scientific publications. In his CV at Ciência Vitae the most frequent keywords that are related with his professional activities are: self-assembly; supramolecular systems; hydrogels; Cancer; 3D disease models; metastasis; hyaluronic acid; gastric cancer; peptide/protein aggregation; amyloid; beta-sheet breakers; protein secondary structure; oligomers; nanofibres; ECM mimics. In the past years he has been dedicated to the development of systems able to reduce the cytotoxicity of different types of amyloids present in neurodegenerative disorders, e.g. Alzheimer's Disease. In particular, he is currently developing nanosystems (e.g. dendrimers) that are able to present different chemical moieties (e.g. saccharides and phenolic) and modulate the aggregation of amyloid-beta 42 (Ab42, a hallmark of Alzheimer's Disease), as well as to control the Ab42 cytotoxicity. He his also developing different types of hydrogels using glycosaminoglycans, supramolecular systems generated by short peptide amphiphiles, or their combination to generate mimics of the extracellular matrix of different tissues. These mimics are tuned to be able to recapitulate the biological environment in healthy and pathological (e.g. cancer) states. While the ones that mimic the pathological states (e.g. cancer) are being developed as platforms to study the cancer onset, evolution, invasiveness in response to the hydrogel composition. These hydrogels are also being used to screen the efficacy of different cancer drugs. In the case of the mimics of the extracellular matrix of the healthy cells, the systems are being tested for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, namely for their capacity to promote the differentiation of stem cells while promoting the regeneration of the target tissue.