Maria Margarida Diogo, the applicant, finished her PhD thesis in Biotechnology at IST in 2004. She is presently an Assistant Professor with Tenure at the Department of Bioengineering of IST, lecturing, among others, the courses “Cell and Tissue Engineering” and “Stem Cell Bioengineering” to all MSc courses coordinated by DBE. She was awarded with the distinction of Excellent Teacher by the Pedagogical Council of Técnico since the first curricular year after being hired, in 2014. She has had an intense post-graduate teaching and management activities in several PhD programs, in particular the PhD program in Bioengineering: Cell Therapies and Regenerative Medicine. She is regularly invited to lecture in post-graduate national and international advanced courses such as the 2nd International Course on Regenerative Medicine Manufacturing, co-organized by Georgia Tech, IST and Loughborough University, in 2016. She is senior researcher at SCERG-iBB, leading the Focus Area Biology and Engineering of Pluripotent Stem Cells, which she pioneered since 2010s. In January 2021 she established her own lab entitled “Stem Cell Advanced Tissue Models Lab”, at SCERG-iBB, focusing the development of advanced neural and cardiac tissue models and their in vitro applications. She supervised/co-supervised 5 post-docs, 12 PhD students and 28 MSc students. She was selected for oral presentations in highly recognized international conferences, such as the Stem Cell Engineering conference and the Scale-up and Manufacturing of Cell-based Therapies. Since 2010 she leaded several national projects as PI (e.g. 3 FCT projects) and she is a WP leader and coordinator at IST of a recently granted collaborative EU project. Her international recognition is also demonstrated by several international publications and an extensive group of national and international instrumental collaborations with experts in stem cell biology and bioengineering that yielded several highly-cited co-authored publications and the co-supervision of several PhD students and post-docs. She published a total of 58 peer-reviewed papers and she has an h-index of 26 and 2011 citations, with an average 31,87 citations per article. As one of her main achievements, she recently published an original research paper in Nature Communications as corresponding author. She published 15 book chapters and 1 book and she is the co-editor of 2 books. In the last two years she co-authored 2 patent applications. She was the member of the panel of evaluation of FCT PhD scholarships in 2018 and 2020. She has had intense management activities as responsible for the communication and outreach activities of the Department of Bioengineering of IST and she is member of the scientific commissions of the MSc courses in Biomedical Engineering, Biological Engineering and Biotechnology at IST. She is presently a member of Rede Saúde of Universidade de Lisboa (working group Neurodegenerative diseases) that she previously co-chaired. She is regularly invited to be a member of the jury in several MSc and PhD thesis in several academic institutions.