Margarida Serra

Margarida Serra is the Head of the Stem and Immune Cells Bioengineering Lab at the Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (iBET) and an invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology of NOVA University Lisbon since 2018. She coordinates and lectures in curricular units across multiple MSc and PhD programs.

• Education: Biological Engineer from Instituto Superior Técnico; PhD in Biomedical Engineering from ITQB-NOVA.

Her research focuses on bridging engineering with cell biology to advance next-generation cell therapies. Key efforts include developing nature-inspired bioprocesses using 3D culture and bioreactor technology for stem cell growth and extracellular vesicle production, applied recently to CAR-T cell manufacturing. Her team integrates omics methodologies and process analytical tools (PAT) to optimize bioprocesses and characterize cell quality attributes like potency.

Current work is funded by EU programs, FCT, and private pharmaceutical industry grants. She collaborates with institutions such as Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), Cellartis AB (Sweden), and University Hospital of Cologne (Germany).