Ana Maria Ferraria graduated in Technological Physics in 1999 at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. In 2002, she received her MSc degree in Surface Science and Engineering from the University of Lisbon and in 2005 she obtained her PhD in Chemistry at Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Still undergraduated student, she started to work in High Temperature Mass Spectrometry at INPG Grenoble in France. Back to Portugal, she started to work at the Centro de Química-Física Molecular (CQFM) at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), where she was introduced to Angle resolved X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (ARXPS) and High Resolution Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (HREELS) by Prof. A. M. Rego. The study of surface phenomena was consolidated with her PhD studies on chemical and biochemical hybrid sensors, using mainly ARXPS (at IST) and FTIRS in ATR/MIR mode (at ITODYS, Université Paris 7). Ever since she has been working in physical chemistry of surfaces having a special interest in sensing surfaces, Carbon allotropes, (photo)catalytic systems, in-situ synthesis of metal/metal oxide nanoparticles on polysaccharides-based surfaces, among others. Since 2017 she has been teaching Chemistry at the Department of Chemical Engineering of IST. She is now a researcher at the Biospectroscopy and Interfaces Research Group (BSIRG) at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB), a research unit of IST, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.