Duarte de Melo-Diogo (PhD) is an Invited Assistant Professor in the University of Beira Interior (UBI), FCT Junior Researcher at Centro de Investigação em Ciências da Saúde (CICS-UBI), member of Topical Advisory Panel of the journal Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923; IF = 5.4), member of the CICS-UBI Scientific Council, and was considered a "Worlds TOP 2% Scientist" in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
He obtained his BSc (score: 16 out of 20; 2012) and MSc (score: 18 out of 20; 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. 53k eur awarded for salary). His PhD thesis (2014-2018) was focused on the synthesis and functionalization of graphene-based nanomaterials for application in cancer photothermal therapy and regenerative medicine, under the supervison of I.J. Correia (CICS-UBI) and R.O. Louro (ITQB-UNL). In Oct. of 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. 219k eur awarded for salary). In January 2023, he started his first project as Principal Investigator (ref. 2022.06320.PTDC; approx. 50k eur), 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. Currently, he is also co-supervising 1 PhD student, supervising 1 Research fellow, 1 MSc student, and is an ad hoc reviewer for 52 indexed journals.
So far, Duarte de Melo-Diogo has collaborated with 50+ researchers, leading to 53 peer-reviewed article publications (1st author/shared 1st authorship: 10; corresponding author: 20; last author: 12), that total 2489 citations according to Scopus or 3082 citations according to Google Scholar, resulting in an h-index of 26. From these articles, 9 were published in TOP10% journals and another 35 in Q1 journals (total IF= 338,9; medium IF= 6.5). According to Scopus, 73.5% of these publications are in the TOP25% most cited documents in the world. He has also been granted 2 patents (1 international, 1 national), published 4 book chapters, delivered 11 invited oral presentations, organized 4 scientific conferences and guest-edited 1 Special Issue. He is also author/co-author of 11 oral and 51 poster communications (3 poster awards). He has co-supervised 2 PhD students and 2 Research fellows, supervised 2 MSc and co-supervised 7 MSc dissertations as well as 22 BSc projects. Furthermore, he was the main examiner of 6 MSc dissertations, examiner of 2 PhD theses and of 16 BSc projects. He also evaluated research projects for ANI (Portugal) and FONDECYT (Chile) as well as PhD applications for Breakthrough Cancer Research (Ireland) and book redaction proposal for Elsevier. He has also participated in research projects that total 461,044.53 eur. 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: April 2024.