Beatriz Costa

Fellow

Nieder Research Group

Beatriz Costa is a Junior Research Fellow in the Ultrafast Bio- and Nanophotonics group at INL under the supervision of Dr. Jana B. Nieder. Her project entitled “Development of diamond photonics platforms for neuronal research” involves the development of 3D scaffolds that contain nanodiamond photonics platforms for neuronal activity mapping, aiming to understand signaling patterns in brain organoids and neurodegenerative disease models. This research is part of the “Diamond4Brain” project funded by La Caixa and FCT and is conducted in collaboration with experts from Neuroscience (U Aveiro) and Medical Sciences (ICVS/UMinho).

In 2021, Beatriz Costa completed her Integrated Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Minho (Braga), with a Major in Medical Electronics. Her master’s thesis, “Microengineered Scaffolds for Three-Dimensional Cell Culture Applications”, enabled her to work in a multidisciplinary field that included microfabrication, imaging, cell culture, and microfluidics. In the scope of her master’s thesis, she enrolled in two internships. The first internship was conducted at TU Delft, Netherlands, where she developed novel resin and hydrogel scaffolds and studied their mechanical properties. In the second internship at INL, she became an expert in 3D micro-fabrication with femtosecond pulsed lasers using custom-developed two-photon polymerization setups and expanded her knowledge in advanced bioimaging techniques, microfluidics (UMinho/INL), and cell culture to be able to characterize cell – microstructure interactions.

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