Duarte de Melo-Diogo (PhD) is an Invited Assistant Professor and FCT Junior Researcher in the University of Beira Interior (UBI), integrated member of the RISE-Health research unit, member of Topical Advisory Panel of the journal Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923), and was considered a "Worlds TOP 2% Scientist" in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
He 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 application in cancer photothermal therapy and regenerative medicine. In Oct. 2018, he obtained his PhD degree in Biochemistry from UBI with the highest grade (Excellent).
After an international legal proceeding, he was selected to be hired as a PhD Researcher (fixed-term contract at UBI; Jan. 2019 - Jan. 2022). Since 2019, he is coordinating 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. In Jan 2022, he started a new position as Invited Assistant Professor (at UBI). In April 2022, he began his FCT Research contract (at CICS-UBI) that was awarded after being ranked 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 recommend for funding after being ranked 1st in the Chemistry Evaluation Panel of the FCT Call for R&D Projects in All Scientific Domains. Soon, he will coordinate another project as Principal Investigator (ref. 2024.15547.PEX; approx. 60k€), that was recommended for funding in the FCT Call for Exploratory Research Projects in all Scientific Domains. Currently, he is supervising/co-supervising 2 PhD and 6 MSc students, and is an ad hoc reviewer for 62 indexed journals.
So far, Duarte de Melo-Diogo has collaborated with 55+ researchers, leading to 58 peer-reviewed article publications (1st author/shared 1st authorship: 10; corresponding author: 23; last author: 15), that total 3295 citations according to Scopus or 4166 citations according to Google Scholar, resulting in an h-index of 31. From these articles, 37 were published in Q1 journals (total IF=340.8; medium IF=5.9). According to Scopus, 75% 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 12 invited oral presentations, organized 4 scientific conferences and guest-edited 1 Special Issue. He is also author/co-author of 12 oral and 52 poster communications (3 poster awards). He has supervised/co-supervised 2 PhD students, 3 Research fellows, 10 MSc dissertations and 30 BSc projects. Furthermore, he was the main examiner of 6 MSc dissertations, examiner of 2 PhD theses and of 18 BSc projects. 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). He has also been lecturing practical and theoretical-practical classes to BSc/MSc degrees at UBI on the subjects of Biomaterials, Cellular Biology, Tissue Engineering.
Last update: October 2025.