Margarida Serra is the Head of Stem Cell Bioengineering Laboratory from the Animal Cell Technology Unit of iBET. She is graduated in Biological Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico, and holds a PhD in Engineering and Technology Sciences, from NOVA University of Lisbon in 2011. She did part of her PhD studies at the Fraunhofer Institut for Biomedical Engineering, Cellartis AB, and Uniklinik Köln. The work developed was innovative as for the first time a bioprocess to expand human embryonic stem cells in scalable and fully controlled bioreactors was developed. The key research line is driven by the vision to streamline robust manufacturing of cell therapy products (CTP) with improved functionality, to support the development on advanced therapies. Her research has focused on the development of novel cell culturing strategies that recreate environmental conditions excelling growth of human pluripotent/adult stem cells and/or their differentiation/maturation into functional CTP, through process understanding. Aiming at accelerating CTP translation into the clinic, she has been applying multi-parametric techniques including omics technologies as complementary analytical tools to support bioprocess optimization and CTP potency assessment. Margarida Serra has published over 51 papers, 2 book chapters and supervised 10 PhD students and she is also an Invited Assistant Professor at NOVA School of Science and Technology - Universidade Nova de Lisboa.