Mara G. Freire graduated in Chemistry in 2003 by University of Aveiro, Portugal, receiving the “Best Chemistry Student Award” from Dow Portugal. By the end of 2007 she completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering by University of Aveiro, with trainees at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France, followed by post-doctoral activities at ITQB2, New University of Lisbon, Portugal. In 2012, Freire was an invited professor at Tiradentes University, Sergipe, Brazil. From June 2013 to January 2014, Freire was an Assistant Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal, and since February 2014 she is a Coordinator Researcher at the same institution. Currently, Freire is the Coordinator of Group 5 of CICECO, Biomedical and Biomimetic Materials, and Deputy Chair of the Scientific Council of University of Aveiro. Freire published +250 papers in international peer reviewed journals, +20 book chapters and edited one book, and has +14,000 citations and h-index of 67. She coordinated/participated in +20 R&D projects, among which a Starting and a Proof of Concept Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). She has filled +10 national/international patents, and is the co-founder of the RYAPURTECH spin-off. Up to date, she has completed the supervision of 18 post-doctoral researchers, and 14 PhD, 53 MSc and 40 BSc students.