Margarida Serra

Margarida Serra is the Head of Stem Cell Bioengineering Laboratory from the Animal Cell Technology Unit (Health & Pharma Division, iBET).

Margarida Serra graduated in Biological Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, and holds a PhD in Engineering and Technology Sciences, Biomedical Engineering from Instituto de Tecnologia Química Biológica da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Working in the Animal Cell Technology (ACT) Unit since 2004, her PhD focused on the design of bioprocesses for the production of human stem cells and derivatives for clinical application. She did part of her PhD studies at the Fraunhofer Institut for Biomedical Engineering (Germany), Cellartis AB (Sweden), and Uniklinik Köln (Germany) where she acquired expertise on culture and characterization of several human stem cell types including adult and pluripotent stem cells. The work developed was innovative as for the first time a bioprocess to expand human embryonic stem cells in scalable and fully controlled bioreactors preventing spontaneous differentiation was developed. 

Following PhD, she became a Researcher Associate (2011), a Senior Scientist (2015) and the Head of Stem Cell Bioengineering Lab (2018) at the ACT where she is leading projects focused on Stem Cell Bioprocessing for Cell Therapy. She has been heavily involved in EU and national funded projects and has been establishing contract research services with Cell Therapy Industries & Biotech Companies as a way to promote translability of the research developed.