Affiliation: Junior Researcher, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto

Laura Cerqueira completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minho, Portugal, in 2012. Her expertise includes exploiting the technological advantages of Nucleic Acid Mimics Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (NAM-FISH) for pathogens detection in food safety, clinical, and environmental areas. Her research led her to be a co-founder of a biotech-based start-up, Biomode, which intended to bring NAM-FISH kits for pathogens detection to the market. Since then, her scientific path has been followed in two complementary ways: focusing on fundamental R&D at LEPABE – FEUP, University of Porto (Portugal), and technology transfer. At LEPABE, her research uses peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes to assess L. pneumophila spatial organization and morphological state within multispecies biofilms in water systems. Additionally, she is deeply involved in the integration studies of FISH with Microfluidic systems to develop simple, portable, rapid and customized point-of-care devices that provide the industry and control laboratories with reliable analytical tools.