Team
Meet our Team
Get to know our exceptional team members, with worldwide recognizion in their field of expertise.
Carlos has an Executive MBA from AESE Business School, a post graduate degree in information systems and a degree in management and public administration from the University of Lisbon.
Since 2016 he assumed the role of head of new product development at INCM (Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office), one of AlmaScience’s main associates, focusing on security printing and digital security solutions areas and on global product portfolio management.
With the launch AlmaScience, he assumed the role of CEO focusing on the set-up of this ambitious institution and on guaranteeing the onboarding of new industrial profile associates with relevant R&D challenges in line with Almascience’s R&D program and business development roadmap.
Previously, accumulated more than 10 years of experience in IT management and IT governance in the public sector, namely in the implementation and dissemination of IT shared services, which he helped transform into a bottom line contributing business area.
Dr. Yoni Engel is an experienced Technology oriented business and product manager, with broad scientific and technical expertise across multiple industries in global markets. He has served as the head of process engineering R&D for the Potash division of ICL (Israel Chemicals) and later worked as the director of product and as Vice President of Business Development for a high tech company which specialized in smart-packaging, brand protection and anti-counterfeiting technologies.
Dr. Engel was a post-doctoral fellow in the University of Massachusetts (2013) holds an M.Sc in Organic chemistry (2007), and a Ph.D in Physical Chemistry from Tel-Aviv University (2012), as well as an M.Sc in Energy engineering from the Technion Institute of Technology (2014). He is the author and co-author of 15 scientific publications and patents in the field of chemistry and nanotechnology.
Prof. Luís Pereira was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1977. He received the Engineering degree in Materials Science in 2001 and has finished the PhD in Microelectronics and Optoelectronics in 2008 at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The PhD work was focused on polycrystalline silicon and high k dielectrics for TFT’s application.
The pos-doc activities were focused on the development of printed inorganic nanostructured materials for chromogenic, electronic and electrochemical devices on paper and plastic substrates. He was involved in the team that demonstrated for the first-time transistors made of oxides with paper acting as gate dielectric. He has authored and co-authored more than 180 publications in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of the ISI with more than 10000 citations.
He was Professor at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia/Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT/UNL) from 2012 to 2020 where he has coordinated and participated in several R&D projects under different funding schemes, including industry direct funding ones. He has been granted in 2015 with a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) on the development of cellulose nanocomposites for paper electronics (New-Fun, project 640598). Recent research interests were on the design and synthesis of 1D, 2D and 3D inorganic and hybrid nanostructures, chiral cellulose nanocomposites, functional micro and nanofibers and its integration on chromogenic, electronic and electrochemical devices.
Nowadays he is member of the board of Portuguese Professional Engineer Association – South Region, Vice-President of the TCM-Net (Transparent Conductive Materials Network), and member of the board of the Portuguese Materials Society (SPM), invited Associate Professor at FCT/UNL, and associate researcher at CENIMAT/I3N.
Tatiana Lima Costa is the Innovation, IP and Funding Manager at AlmaScience. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry (University of Aveiro, UA), a Post-Graduation in Industrial Property Law (University of Lisbon) .
For the past 5 ½ years, she worked as Science and Technology Manager/Funding Advisor at the Research Support Office of UA, mainly supporting pre-award, post-award/project management and internationalization activities.
Previously she integrated UA technology transfer office (2011-2014), where she dealt with intellectual property issues, knowledge and technology transfer and University-enterprise cooperation.
During the last years she has been invited for lecturing on different courses and has been collaborating with the European Commission as independent expert as well as with the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) and its UK counterpart (ARMA).
She has also interest in research in the field of Research Management, Technology Transfer, Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation Management, Science and Innovation Politics, University - Enterprise Relations.
Carlos Clara is currently the CEO of Grupo Clara Saúde and Specialist Doctor in Clinical Pathology at the Labocentro laboratory.
He graduated in Medicine at the University of Coimbra in 1989 and later obtained the degree of Specialist in Clinical Pathology. He has completed several post graduation studies (Management of Health Units, Business Management) and is a trained quality control auditor.
His professional path included positions as Director of Clinical Pathology Service (Centro Hospitalar Barreiro Montijo), a period in the Military Unit where he worked as a military General Physician and headed the Health Service and all its health support activity and teaching activity in different HEIs.
He collaborated(es) with several professional associations and organizations, namely he was the president of APOMEPA (Associação Portuguesa dos Médicos Patologistas, 2004-2012), was the Vice-President of ANL (National Association of Laboratories, 2006-2008), is member of AMGUS (Association of Medical Managers of Health Units) and Ambassador of the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health at the Centro Hospitalar Barreiro Montijo.
Carlos Pascoal Neto, is Full Professor (“Professor Catedrático”) of the University of Aveiro (UA) and RAIZ / The Navigator Company, Director.
He started his academic career in 1992. On October 2015, he left the University of Aveiro to join The Navigator Company (former Portucel Soporcel Group), as General Director of RAIZ – Forest and Paper Research Institute, the R&D Centre of the Company.
He has been Vice-Rector of the University of Aveiro for Cooperation with Society, Innovation, Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship (2010-2015).
Formerly, he has been Director of the Chemistry Department of UA (2007-2010). Carlos teaching and research activities at UA have been focused on Forest Products Chemistry and Technology.
He is graduated in Chemistry by UA, “Docteur” (PhD) by the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), France, and has the “Agregação” degree in Chemistry by UA.
Manuel Campos Monteiro is currently the New Business Development Group Leader of Fraunhofer Portugal Research Centre for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions (AICOS).
Manuel holds an M.Sc. in Electrical and Computers Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. He graduated in 2012 after presenting his work on wireless-optical interfaces, developed at INESC-TEC.
Manuel joined Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS' research team in 2012, conducting research activities in sensors' data acquisition, analysis, and processing, in the scope of several projects. In 2018, he became Innovation Lead for Cognitive Connected Solutions.
In 2019, he joined ACLImpex. After working as the Director for Technology Innovation and as a Member of the Executive Board for one year, Manuel returned to Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS for his current role.
Since 2017, he has been cooperating with different organisations as an Innovation Consultant.
Rodrigo Martins is Full Professor of Faculty of Sciences and Technology of New University of Lisbon (FCT-NOVA), Portugal and the running President of the European Academy of Sciences as well as the nominated President of the International Union of Materials Research Societies for the period 2021-2023.
He is member of several boards and associations (Portuguese Academy of Engineering, Portuguese Order of Engineers, EIT KIC Raw Materials).
He founded and is the director of the Centre of Excellence in Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Processes of Uninova, being also the leader of the Materials, Optoelectronics and Nanotechnologies group of I3N/CENIMAT.
He is expert in the field of advanced functional materials, nanotechnologies, microelectronics, transparent electronics and paper electronics, with more than 570 papers published in WoK and has editorial and reviewing activity in many Q1 journals.
Rodrigo Martins has been involved in the pioneer European research on amorphous silicon semiconductors and is a pioneer - together with his group - in worldwide activity related to passive and active oxides, the so called transparent electronics and he is one of the inventors of the so-called paper electronics, where paper is exploited not only as a substrate but also as a functional component in active devices.
He got more than 17 international and national prizes and distinctions for his work (e.g.: gold medal of merit and distinction by the Almada Municipality, 2016; Lisbon Energy Live Expo, Innovation prize, 2012 (Solar tiles); European Patent Office Innovation nomination 2016 (paper electronics); Exame Informática Innovation prize 2016 (paper solar cells).
Pedro Barquinha received his PhD in Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences from NOVA University of Lisbon in 2010. He is currently Associate Professor at the Materials Science Department of FCT-NOVA and group leader of Materials for Electronics, Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology at CENIMAT|I3N.
Low-temperature oxide electronics has been his core research area since 2004, including thin film deposition, nanostructure synthesis and their integration in flexible devices such as transistors, circuits and nanogenerators.
This has been achieved through >40 research projects with academia and industry, including an ERC Starting Grant (TREND) and an ERC Proof of Concept Grant (FLETRAD). He co-authored >170 peer-reviewed papers (h-index=52, as September 2022), 3 books and 7 book chapters and since 2020 is an editor at IEEE EDL.
Since 2022 he is a member of the Portuguese Council for Science, Technology and Innovation and also a member of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) council.
Liliana Ferreira is the director of the Fraunhofer Research Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions (AICOS) in Portugal and Full Professor Invited at Department of Informatics of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.
Her research focuses mainly on the areas of Natural Language Processing, Medical Knowledge Representation, Information Extraction, and Health Informatics.
Liliana holds a degree in Applied Mathematics and Technology by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (2002), an MSc in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Aveiro (2005), and a Ph.D. in Informatics (2011) also from the University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Liliana has developed her research in industry and research organizations as Philips Research Eindhoven (NL), IBM Research and Development Böblingen (DE), the Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro (PT), the Ubiquitous Knowledge Lab of the Technical University of Darmstadt (DE) and the University of Tübingen (DE).
Silvia Garcia, is Head of the Innovation Lab at INCM (Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office).
She holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology with a post graduate degree in industrial management and a degree in chemical engineering from FCT-NOVA.
She has more than 10 years of experience in industry, regarding her experience in coordination and execution of R&DI and engineering projects.
In the last years she has been working on the innovation field, focused in developing ideas and its implementation through multidisciplinary R&DI projects (national and international) in order to promote new technological areas.
During its activity she has been supervising PhD students and master's degree, as company adviser, and reviewing scientific articles for peer reviewed journals.
Besma Kraiem has over 25 years of experience in engineering, strategy & planning, B2B sales and marketing, business development and operation management.
Besma is a Tunisian German Executive with broad experience in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. She has held various leadership positions in Consumer Electronics, Telecom, IT, Engineering and Consulting Services; across Germany, UK, Japan, Qatar and Portugal.
Her various roles included developing and launching new products and services, developing and executing global branding campaigns, managing European wide B2B accounts, coordinating global commercial strategies, building and managing sponsorship programs, implementing new market entries and long-term relationships with strategic partners, leading sales and business development teams across multiple countries, advising founders and CxOs on strategy and growth plans.
Besma currently serves as Executive Board Member of ISQ, a Portuguese Engineering Group with 13 companies operating in more than 20 countries.
Frederico is a C-level executive focused on investment management since 2016.
Frederico has international experience for 18 years with academic and professional track record in the United Kingdom, France, Portugal and Brazil. Native speaker in French and Portuguese, fluent in English.
In 2021, Frederico founded Front Capital (Portugal), an angel investment and advisory firm serving corporates, startups, individual investors, equity funds, and public policy makers.
Prior to launching Front Capital, Frederico served as an Executive Board Director and Chief Investment Officer of Instituição Financeira de Desenvolvimento, the state-owned / public development bank in Portugal (funds of funds in venture and private equity, bank on-lending, and mutual credit guarantees), Executive Board Director of Portugal Ventures, a leading venture capital firm (ICT, Life Sciences, Hardware, Travel), Analyst to VP in investment banking at BNP Paribas and The Royal Bank of Scotland (M&A and structured finance in the UK, France and Brazil), and Cabinet Aide in the Portuguese Government (corporate finance and privatizations for infrastructure SOEs and PPPs).
Gonçalo Caseiro has marked his professional career evidencing his interest and dedication to Public Service and Innovation, having played several functions in public administration agencies and the private sector.
In December 2020, was distinguished as The Best Digital Leader in Portugal, by IDC.
Currently, Gonçalo brings together more than 13 years of executive experience in large organizations, standing out in organizational development and digital transformation with the incorporation of Portuguese technology.
Gonçalo created more than 30 R&D projects and collaborated with more than 50 entities, creating the biggest Portuguese innovation award: the IN3+ Award.
He was, throughout his career, involved in the implementation of simplification and eGovernment strategies transversal to the Portuguese State and was a consultant on surveillance strategy in public procurement for the Brazilian State.
Pedro Almeida is the Managing Director of PCI – Creative Science Park Aveiro Region, a science and technology park that has the mission to be the operational and strategic promoter of innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship of Aveiro Region.
He holds a Master's degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Aveiro, and with a Postgraduate Degree in Management for Executives from the same University, he has developed his professional career in the ICT sector and has more than 20 years of experience focused on the areas of research, development and innovation. Between 2000 and 2007 he was a researcher at IEETA – Instituto de Engenharia Eletrónica e Telemática de Aveiro.
From 2006 to 2012 he was an Independent Expert Evaluator in the European Commission's eContentplus and CIP ICT PSP Policy Support programs. Between 2007 and 2012 he was founding partner and CEO of one of the first spin-off companies of the University of Aveiro.
Since 2013 he has been a member of the Board of the Fraunhofer Portugal Research Association (Fraunhofer Portugal), and between 2013 and 2021 he was responsible for the Shared Services Department and the Financial Department of the same entity. Between 2000 and 2021, he was President of Inova-Ria, an association of ICT based companies, and Invited Assistant Professor at the Dep. of Electronics and Telecommunications at the University of Aveiro.
Sebastião is a manager with over 12 years of experience in mixing R&D, technology, and transformation in companies.
Nowadays, is a Strategic Advisor at Salesforce, where he works with companies in several sectors of various dimensions in Portugal and Europe, to accelerate their data and digital transition.
Previously, he was Principal at BCG, supporting companies in the telecommunications and technology field, to define and accelerate the transformation in their business and digital transformation; was an engineer of R&D at l’Oréal.
Senior
Andreia dos Santos is a biomedical engineer with a PhD from the MIT-Portugal Doctoral Program (2015 - 2021).
During her PhD thesis, she developed e-skin like pressure and temperature sensors for health monitoring applications, as well as energy harvesting devices, exploring laser engraving for performance optimization. Currently, she is working at AlmaScience Colab as the senior researcher responsible for the sensors electrical characterization.
Bruno Ravanello is a Senior Researcher on Paper Technology at AlmaScience.
He has a PhD in Natural Sciences from Martin-Luther University (Germany) where he worked with the chemical functionalization of carbon nanomaterials.
His expertise’s range from synthetic organic chemistry to the pulp and paper industry, developing projects in biorefinery, chemical modifications of forest-based materials and smart applications for bio-based products.
Bruno Veigas is a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience focused on the development of biosensors, with a special emphasis on multiplexed, on-site-enabled technologies.
Some of these concepts led to the development of electrochemical-based real-time gene expression methods, nanotechnology-based infectious disease detection, nano-optical principles for early detection of autoimmune diseases, together with the integration into microfluidic devices.
Cristina Gaspar has a PhD in Printed Intelligence, from Aalto University.
At VTT, she acquired strong knowledge on sensor development and upscaling R2R technologies, at Aalto, on printing nanocellulose-based solutions and at Cenimat, she worked in paper electronics.
Currently, as a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience, she develops innovative, sustainable, and eco-friendly cellulose-based smart applications, for everyday life.
Diana Gaspar is a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience on electronics and photonics on nature-based substrates. She has a PhD in Advanced Materials and Processing; whose topic was cellulose-based substrates for applications in electronic devices.
Moreover, she was a researcher in the CENIMAT/i3N and CEMOP, with a focus on materials development and paper electronics. She is the PI of CELLECTIVE, a project funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation, that focuses on cellulose nanocrystals and their application in dynamic natural structures with fast actuation responses.
Fausto Queda is a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience on Chemistry/Biochemistry. He has a BSc in Biochemistry a MSc in Bioorganic chemistry and a PhD in Sustainable Chemistry. His PhD topic was chemical modification of chitin and chitosan. He was awarded with the “Best PhD thesis in Organic Chemistry” by the Sociedade Portuguesa da Química (SPQ) in 2022. After PhD, he worked as a Post-Doc Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Pharmacy, developing new synthetical methods to functionalize biopolymers. His research has been pioneering at the interface of sustainable chemistry, organic chemistry and material chemistry. He has published several articles in important journal across his academic pathway.
Felisberto Pereira is a Senior Researcher on Electronics and Telecommunications at AlmaScience.
He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Aveiro and a Master in Management from Católica Porto Business School.
Felisberto started is profissional carrear at Lapa Studio as hardware developer, and then worked as a researcher at Instituto de Telecomunicações developing systems in passive, semi-passive and active technologies for IoT applications.
Nowadays, his main research is focused on solving the energy and communications challenges faced by IoT devices that are preventing this technology from being widely deployed and more sustainable.
João Avelas Resende is a Senior Researcher on Materials for Electronics at AlmaScience, Lisbon, Portugal.
His main research is focused on new materials for microelectronics and energy harvesting technologies, aiming to improve the human development in a sustainable way.
In his current position, he explores the innovation, development, and deployment of cellulose-based materials for smart and sustainable applications.
Mónica Simões is a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience in Paper Technology.
She received her Ph.D. in Chemical and Process Engineering in 2021 at the Graz University of Technology in the scope of the FibretNet project, an innovative Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ITN project in the field of bio-based fibres.
Her background as an R&D engineer includes stimuli-sensitive drug delivery systems, intelligent textiles, nanoscale inter-fiber contact measuring techniques, and paper performance/technology.
Sumita Goswami is a Senior Researcher at AlmaScience working for sensor technology development.
She did Ph.D. in Materials Science and Nanotechnology following a Post-Doc in CENIMAT|i3N group of Portugal.
Expertise: Functionalize polymer materials for diverse applications like energy harvesting, sensing, data storage; Develop & design prototypes for Wearables and Paper based electronics; Characterize and analyze relevant process data and identify scientific/technological solutions to process problems.
Junior
Alexandra Lopes is a Junior Researcher at AlmaScience in Electronics and Embedded Systems. She completed her master’s degree in biomedical engineering at NOVA School of Science and Technology, where she developed her thesis in Bio-Radar Applications for Remote Vital Signs Monitoring by the year 2020. She describes her journey as a combination of theoretical and practical experience in multiple areas from physics, instrumentation, and bio-signals processing applied to medicine. She enjoys meeting the balance between academic research and its applications in the real world.
She is from Pinhal Novo (Setúbal) has a MsC in Biochemistry from University of Évora.
During her BsC she had the opportunity to work with edible films, and at her Msc she embraced the electrochemistry field with an innovative theme whose objective was to find toxic components in tattoo ink through electrochemical methods.
She also had the opportunity to work with this theme for two more years, exploring the use of new electrodes and new techniques.
Catarina Fernandes is a Junior Researcher at AlmaScience focused in Sensor Development. She was born in Lisbon, and obtained her graduation in Chemical and Biochemical Engineer at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (FCT/UNL). Her background experience was at industry, where Catarina was engineering project designer, and she was also involved in the certification process, based on the implementation of the Integrated Management System.
Mariana Matias, born and grown in Covilhã. Obtained her Master's degree in Micro and Nanotechnologies Engineering at NOVA School of Science and Technology (FCT/UNL), Portugal, in 2019.
She worked as a researcher in several projects for 1 year in CENIMAT.
Since 2020, she works as a junior researcher in printed electronics at AlmaScience.
Rita Baptista (BSc and MSc in Biochemistry) is a junior researcher at AlmaScience, where she conducts R&D activities in the field of Chemistry.
She has a strong background in analytical chemistry (electrochemistry) and biophysics. Her main interests are focused on the synthesis and characterisation of cellulose-based matrixes and the integration of biomolecules on cellulosic substrates for sensing applications.
Shubham Das is a Junior Researcher at AlmaScience focused on the field of Electronics and Embedded Systems.
He worked for Ausy – A Ranstand Company for 6 months as an Embedded Developer on a project in Airbus, Toulouse.
He has a great understanding of the concepts related to Embedded Systems and their Development and has gained significant experience in the domain of electronics and programming through various projects. He is passionate about technology and also has the curiosity and motivation to explore new fields.
Tomás Freire is a Junior Researcher for Functionalized Inks at AlmaScience. He is from Lisbon’s suburban area and obtained is master’s degree in Materials Engineering at FCT-UNL in the year of 2018.
It was at CENIMAT, working as a research fellow, where he started to develop some interest on technology development due to being able to work on several projects. This was a pivotal moment that lead him to want to abridge the academic-industry relationship.
Wilson Santos is a Junior Researcher at AlmaScience in the fields of Software, Embedded Systems, PCB designing and Hybrid Electronics. In 2021, he received his master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Nova School of Science & Technology. Throughout his master thesis, he focused his work in Flexible Hybrid Electronics, combining flexible membranes of parylene-C with conventional hard electronics. This work involved thin-film microfabrication techniques and the integration of hard electronics onto the substrate as well as microcontroller programming to develop a wireless skin patch for temperature monitoring, based on RFID technology. Moreover, he is also interested in web development, having a wide experience in HTML, CSS and Javascript related frameworks.