Luís Pereira de Almeida coordinates GeneT – Gene Therapy Center of Excellence, as well as CNC— Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (since 2020) and the Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (since 2018) —Associate Laboratory (CIBB) at the University of Coimbra, where he is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy. He has been working in the field of gene therapy since 1998, where he completed his PhD at the Lausanne Gene Therapy Center (CHUV) in Switzerland, focusing primarily on gene therapy for brain diseases such as Machado-Joseph disease. The research group he leads has published results in more than 160 articles in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and in patent applications. He is a member of the National Mirror Group of the European Rare Diseases Research Alliance ERDERA, of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Angelman Syndrome Alliance, the CTGCT International Advisory Board, and Adamastor Bioservices. He is part of the Strategic Council of the Council of Associate Laboratories. He has coordinated over 40 research projects, many of them international and supervised over two dozen PhD students and more than a dozen postdoctoral researchers. He coordinates several European projects in the field of gene therapy (e.g., GeneH - Excellence Hub, Gcure Era-Chair, Capacity2023) and co-coordinates work packages in projects related to rare diseases (ERDERA) and viral vectors (ARDAT). Notably, he coordinates GeneT—a Teaming project under the Horizon Europe program—to implement a new Center of Excellence in Gene Therapy at the University of Coimbra.

Head of the Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant Service, Full Professor of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Group Leader at GIMM - Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine

Margarida Serra is the Head of Stem and Immune Cells Bioengineering Laboratory of iBET. She holds a PhD in Engineering and Technology Sciences, from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (2011). She did part of her studies at Cellartis AB (Sweden), Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering and University Clinic of Cologne (Germany). Her research is driven by the vision to bridge engineering and cell biology, with the goal of accelerating next generation cell-based therapies. She has been working on the development of biology-inspired cell bioprocesses to excel growth and differentiation/maturation of human pluripotent and adult stem cells and the production of derived extracellular vesicles. This knowledge is also being applied to CAR T cells manufacturing. She has been applying robust multi-parametric techniques and omics technologies to support bioprocess optimization and characterization of cells’ quality attributes. She has published 70 papers, and supervised 14 PhD and 28 MSc students.