Ana Martins obtained her B.S. degree in Applied Biology from the University of Minho, Portugal in 2004. In 2006, she also completed a Post-graduation Course on Processing and Characterization of Materials (first year of the Masters in Processing and Characterization of Materials) at the same University.
In April 2006, she formally started her Ph.D. at the 3B’s Research Group –University of Minho, Portugal under the supervision of Prof. Rui L. Reis. She worked on the development, characterization, and modification with biomimetic coatings of novel scaffolds cultured using flow dynamic bioreactors for bone tissue engineering. At the same time, she received a scholarship for her doctoral research studies from the European Network of Excellence, EXPERTISSUES, which enabled her to perform her studies at Rice University, Houston, USA. During her Ph.D. work, she spent several periods at Rice University under the supervision of Prof. Antonios G. Mikos.
In 2009, Ana Martins obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering.
In June of 2010, she earned a Postdoctoral fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to develop her research project regarding the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells using non-viral vectors and cardiomyocytes differentiation, the development of electroconductive biomaterials, and the use of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes for cardiac disorders and rare diseases at University of Minho and Columbia University at the lab of Prof. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic. During those years, she worked closely with physicians and patients with rare diseases namely preparing, writing, and submitting several grant proposals as well as preparing teams, scientific consortia, and detailed budgets; and on establishing protocols with hospitals as well as writing clinical and ethical protocols to the ethical commissions.
In 2018, Ana Martins was selected as a Marie Sklodowska Curie MINDED Researcher to join the Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine Laboratory directed by Prof Paolo Decuzzi at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Her research project involves the use of microfluidic chips, nanoparticles, and therapeutic compounds to study neurodevelopmental disorders. Also, she has been invited expert evaluator of projects for the European Commission, the French National Research Agency (ANR), the Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF), and the Graduate Women of Science (USA); as well as being a reviewer in several peer-review journals.
