PhD Candidate
Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Portugal
Sónia Siquenique is a PhD student at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) (Porto, Portugal), in collaboration with Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel), supervised by Prof. Bruno Sarmento and Prof. Avi Schroeder. Her current research focuses on the targeted delivery of protein-producing particles for diabetes treatment, and since 2021 she has been gaining experience in developing specialized carriers for bioactive compound delivery. During her PhD, she carried out a 7-month doctoral secondment at Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) to evaluate in vitro performance of drug delivery systems in humanized models. Additionally, she conducted another secondment at Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel) to learn the development of synthetic cells. She holds a MSc degree in Biopharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon (2021) and a BSc degree in Biochemistry from the University of Évora (2018). She developed her master dissertation at iMed.ULisboa-Research Institute for Medicines (Lisbon) under the supervision of Dr. Susana Solá and co-supervision of Dr. Cecília Rodrigues. She worked for two years as a contracted researcher in the Department of Formulations and Process Development at InnovPlantProtect Collaborative Laboratory (Elvas, Portugal). Sónia published a peer-reviewed paper as first author in a high-impact journal, co-authored two peer-reviewed papers, presented her work at national and international meetings and conferences and obtained a COST action grant. Throughout her journey, Sónia was also involved in organizing different scientific meetings and she has also been involved in different organizing committees. In her free time, Sónia enjoys visiting new places, reading a good book, and having fun with family and friends
