Ana Manjua

Biography

Ana Carina Manjua is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, Netherlands) since March 2023, where she is developing innovative heart-on-chip technologies in collaboration with her co-host institution, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland).

Her main scientific interests are driven by a passion for advancing the development of cardiovascular tissue engineering.
With a strong background in materials science and biomedical engineering, Ana’s primary research interests lie at the intersection of nanotechnology and biomedical applications. She is focused on the development of smart materials and biodevices, with an emphasis on green technologies aimed at improving healthcare outcomes. Current areas of research include the scaffold design, stem cell culturing and cardiac culturing and fabrication of microfluidic platforms using 3D printing and soft lithography technologies.

Ana is also passionate about scientific outreach and communication. She has authored and co-authored six publications in high-impact journals, is currently working on four publications, and presented her work at several international conferences. She has worked as a reviewer for multiple journals, including Nature publishing group, and been invited for the editorial board of Frontiers since 2021. She has supervised four bachelor and master students in between Portugal and the Netherlands and is currently supervising two master students, one from IST-Portugal and the other from TU/e-Netherlands. She has collaborated with several researchers from Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands and Portugal. Ana has been teaching assistant in three courses since 2016 in both Portugal and the Netherlands and she has been invited to give three seminars for master courses on topics ranging from regenerative medicine to 3D design and microfluidic technology.

In 2024, Ana has been a member of the organization committee for the prestigious conference MicroTAS at Montreal (Canada) and promoting the next MicroTAS conference for 2025 in Adelaide (Australia).

She is currently working on a IP patent submission of her main Marie Curie project at TU/e. She aims to continue her research through innovative projects with the potential for intellectual property (IP) development and industry integration. Ana aspires to build a distinguished academic career and to establish herself as a leading researcher with strong collaborations across academia and industry.

During her dynamic and versatile young career, she has proved to possess the capacity to thrive in different academic and industrial contexts.

From 2021 until February 2023, she worked at the Portuguese company Bioceramed - Cerâmicos para Aplicações Médicas, managing FDA regulatory processes and coordinating clinical trials.

Ana completed her PhD in Bioengineering, focusing on Cell Therapies and Regenerative Medicine, at Instituto Superior Técnico Lisboa in December 2020. She holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering.

In July 2013, Ana was awarded a Master Fellowship funded by FCT-MEC (REQUIMTE/CQFB, FCT-UNL, supervised by Dr. Carla Portugal) to work on the fabrication of magnetic membranes for chemical process separation.

For her Master's dissertation, completed in 2012 at DCM/Cenimat-I3N, FCT-UNL (supervised by Prof. Isabel Ferreira and Prof. João Borges), Ana investigated implantable and biodegradable electronic devices using electrospun polymeric membranes for low-power consumption biomedical applications.

In January 2015, Ana joined the MIT Portugal Program in Bioengineering Systems for a post-graduation course within the fields of Bioprocess Engineering, Computational Biosciences, Drug Development, Neuroscience, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

In April 2015, Ana was awarded a second Research Fellowship under the D-Factory European Project, funded by IBET (LAQV, REQUIMTE, FCT-UNL), under the guidance of Prof. João Crespo and Dr. Carla Portugal.

Ana has been a tutor of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology since 2012.