Biographical Note

Duarte de Melo-Diogo obtained his BSc (2012) and MSc (2014) degrees in Biomedical Sciences from UBI. His MSc dissertation (2013-2014) comprised the synthesis of di/tri-block copolymers by ROP for drug/gene delivery. Later, he was awarded by FCT with a fellowship to pursue his PhD studies (approx. 47k€ awarded for salary). His PhD thesis in Biochemistry (2014-2018) was focused on the synthesis and functionalization of graphene-based nanomaterials for cancer photothermal therapy and regenerative medicine. In Oct 2018, he obtained his PhD degree in Biochemistry from UBI with the highest grade (Excellent).

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From Jan 2019 to Jan 2022, he was hired as a PhD Researcher at UBI (fixed-term contract). Between Jan 2022 and Aug 2026, he was an Invited Assistant Professor at UBI. From Apr 2022 to Aug 2026, he benefited from a FCT Research contract (at CICS-UBI) that was awarded after ranking 1st in the category of Junior Researcher (< 5 years of PhD conclusion) in the Chemical Sciences Panel of the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus promoted by FCT (ref. 2021.00590.CEECIND; approx. 238k€ awarded for salary). From Jan 2023 to Jan 2025, he coordinated his first project as Principal Investigator (ref. 2022.06320.PTDC; approx. 50k€), which was funded after ranking 1st in the Chemistry Evaluation Panel of the FCT Call for R&D Projects. In Jan. 2026, he started the coordination of another project as Principal Investigator (ref. 2024.15547.PEX; approx. 60k€), that was funded in the FCT Call for Exploratory Research Projects. In Sept 2026, he started a new position at UBI as Assistant Professor, being the Coordinator of several Course Units: Bionanosystems (Id. 17257), Chemistry (Id. 18492), Chemistry (Id. 8538), and Chemistry (Id. 15793). He also lectures Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering, among others.

 

Since 2019, he coordinates a small team of PhD and MSc students that is exploring the potential of nanomaterials’ photothermal effect in cancer therapy and developing macroscale delivery systems. Currently, he is supervising/co-supervising 2 PhD and 3 MSc students as well as 3 Research Fellows.

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So far, Duarte de Melo-Diogo has collaborated with 55+ researchers, leading to 61 peer-reviewed article publications (1st author/shared 1st authorship: 10; corresponding author: 25; last author: 17), that total 3734 citations according to Scopus or 4722 citations according to Google Scholar, resulting in an h-index of 34. From these articles, 40 were published in Q1 journals (total IF=398.7; medium IF=6.5). According to Scopus, 78.9% of his publications are in the TOP25% most cited documents in the world and 98.1% of his publications are in the TOP25% journals by CiteScore. He has also been granted 2 patents (1 international, 1 national), published 4 book chapters, delivered 14 invited oral presentations, organized 5 scientific conferences and guest-edited 1 Special Issue. He is also author/co-author of 14 oral and 53 poster communications (4 poster awards). He has supervised/co-supervised 3 PhD theses, 3 Research fellows, 16 MSc dissertations and 32 BSc projects. Furthermore, he was the main examiner of 6 MSc dissertations, examiner of 3 PhD theses and of 18 BSc projects. He is also an ad hoc reviewer for 64 indexed journals. He also evaluated research projects for ANI (Portugal) and FONDECYT (Chile), PhD fellowships for Breakthrough Cancer Research (Ireland) and book redaction proposal for Elsevier (Netherlands). So far, he has helped secure 1,058,464.29€ for R&D projects and 13,831,855.61€ for Institutional funding. He was also awarded 285,307.22€ as individual grants to cover his salary. 

 

His current research interests are (i) synthesis and functionalization of light-responsive nanomaterials for cancer therapy, (ii) development of macroscale delivery technologies and (iii) investigation of nanomaterials’ mediated immuno-photothermal approaches.