Henrique Martiniano Vazão de Almeida

AFMMN
Advanced Functional Materials for Micro and Nanotechnologies
Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus - 3rd Edition
Junior Researcher (FCT CEEC 3rd Edition - 2020)
1.14 11609
2 11617
hmmv.almeida@fct.unl.pt

Description

Henrique Vazão de Almeida received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Materials Engineering from Universidade NOVA (2007). Before starting his Ph.D., he worked in the Biomaterials field for 5 years (Industry-based). Henrique graduated in 2016 with his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (Daniel J. Kelly and Fergal O’Brien as supervisors). In 2016, Henrique started to work as a Postdoc at Lino Ferreira’s Lab (University of Coimbra), and in 2017 he was awarded an FCT postdoctoral fellowship. In the context of the postdoctoral fellowship in cardiac tissue engineering, he moved to ITQB/iBET (2018). In 2019, he was awarded a junior PI funding (iBETXplore) to execute a project in the context of 3D bioprinted tissues for drug screening and disease modeling. In 2021, Henrique was awarded the “Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus - 3rd Edition” fellowship. In the context of his recently granted award, Henrique moved to CENIMAT|i3N (2022).


Henrique is a bioengineer, material engineer, and expert in nature-derived biomaterials. He is interested in novel tissue engineering and regenerative medicine approaches to restore damaged biological tissues and bioengineer in vitro models. Currently, he is focused on developing cardiac tissue engineering strategies based on conductive biomaterials. He also started to work with point-of-care devices for disease management and regenerative medicine.




Main publications


Almeida, H. V. et al. Human Extracellular-Matrix Functionalization of 3D hiPSC-Based Cardiac Tissues Improves Cardiomyocyte Maturation. ACS Applied Bio Materials 4, 1888 1899 (2021).



Abecasis, B. et al. Toward a Microencapsulated 3D hiPSC-Derived in vitro Cardiac Microtissue for Recapitulation of Human Heart Microenvironment Features. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 8, 1163 (2020).



Cunniffe, G. M. et al. Tissue-Specific Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds for the Regeneration of Spatially Complex Musculoskeletal Tissues. Biomaterials 188, 63–73 (2019).



Gouveia, P. J. et al. Flexible Nanofilms Coated with Aligned Piezoelectric Microfibers Preserve the Contractility of Cardiomyocytes. Biomaterials 139, 213–228 (2017).



Almeida, H. V. et al. Anisotropic Shape-Memory Alginate Scaffolds Functionalized with Either Type I or Type II Collagen for Cartilage Tissue Engineering. Tissue Engineering Part A 23, 55–68 (2017).


Almeida, H. V. et al. Fibrin Hydrogels Functionalized with Cartilage Extracellular Matrix and Incorporating Freshly Isolated Stromal Cells as an Injectable for Cartilage Regeneration. Acta Biomaterialia 36, 55–62 (2016).




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