She is an active researcher with a proven record of thirteen years of research experience, where she has developed a robust set of academic and research skills. She has gathered competences in mass spectrometry and chromatography from her previous work experience at Hovione FarmaCiencia SA (API chemical industry, Lisbon), Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon), Cranfield University and more recently, Brunel University London. Since then, she has contributed significantly to research projects in areas including disease diagnosis, material characterisation, fundamental chemistry, environmental contaminants and air quality monitoring. She has hands-on experience with a range of analytical techniques used in VOC analysis, including GC-MS, SIFT-MS and PTR-MS.
Collaborating within inter- and multidisciplinary teams, she has actively contributed to projects integrating healthcare, sensor technology and engineering.
In her previous roles, she has actively contributed to KEE through collaborative research and dissemination of findings with both academic and commercial partners, such as NHS Trusts, Pitt Rivers Museum, CONCAWE (Conservation of Clean Air and Water in Europe) and Mary Lyon Centre (MRC Harwell).
In the context of clinical diagnostics and medical applications, she has developed workflows for (a) investigating longitudinal changes in volatile faecal metabolites in mouse models of Type 2 Diabetes, where data analysis provided insights into age-related changes in the gut metabolome of Type 2 Diabetes mouse models; (b) non-invasive screening for colorectal cancer (biomarker discovery), where the study was conducted in individuals who tested positive with faecal occult blood test (FOBT) screening. Interestingly, this non-invasive method proved to be better at screening for colorectal cancer than the current FOBT. And (c) the monitoring of anaesthetic agents in exhaled breath to develop a pharmacokinetic model for predicting an accurate dose of propofol for surgical patients.
