Ricardo Ferraz is a professor at the School of Health at the Polytechnic University of Porto. He graduated in Chemistry in 2002 and received his Master's degree in 2006 at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto. He is the Project Leader in “ORCHIDS” (https://www.fc.up.pt/orchids/projlead.html). His work “Development of novel ionic liquids based on ampicillin” was not the first to produce ILs based on pharmaceutical ingredients but was the first to successfully produce ILs based on compounds that are easily. He is now working on the drug-derived IL concept in the field of antimalarial research. Here, he started to recycle antimalarial drugs into ILs. The pioneering work in this area, “Primaquine-based ionic liquids as a novel class of antimalarial hits”, has our brand and enabled us to advance a primaquine-based IL hit that was active against the three stages of the malaria parasite development inside the human host. His research interests include the synthesis and physicochemical characterization of ionic liquids; API-ILs: active pharmaceutic ingredients-derived ionic liquids; and the development of novel ionic liquids as anti-infective agents.