My quest to maintain a presence across multiple social networks continues 😂 The scientific community is quite dispersed across platforms.

I've now found a way to publish in the 3 main ones (LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky) at once! Need to do a bit of gymnastics with character counts but great tech 😀

You still have a chance to submit an abstract to Society for Biomaterial's 2026 meeting in Atlanta - deadline extended until the 21st! 📝

If you're working on new 3D models by manipulating cells and biomaterials do consider submitting to the session we're organizing on the topic!

#SFB2026

Granter, the Startup winner of this year's Web Summit Pitch contest, has as its core product an AI platform to... prepare Grant proposals!

Solid idea if you ask me. But what does it really say about our funding systems that there's room for such parallel business models to make so much sense?

Or use liquid-gel environments to create multicellular fiberoids - like a spheroid that is prolonged through space - with close cell-cell interactions like those happening in the cancer microenvironment, e.g., between glioblastoma and astrocytes👇

This enabled us to establish an awesome platform to fabricate miniaturized cancerous tissues with very high throughput and highly adaptable shapes.

We can create up to ~2500 spheroid pockets in 1 minute! And recapitulate tissue-like cancer solid stress by surrounding them:

2. Are we able to work with different material phases other than hydrogels, like liquids or even air, and use those to create new types of compartments within these microfiber boundaries?

Yes!

And we can use them to direct the growth of cellular assemblies.

This work was led by Ramon Rial, when he was visiting us for his PostDoc, and spun out of 2 challenges:

1. Can we predict the shape of hydrogel fibers spun through flow-focusing microchips computationally, test, experiment and optimize before stepping into the lab?

Yes!

Very happy to share our latest 3B's publication, online now in @cp-matter.bsky.social 🥳

We took our work in microfluidic-driven biofabrication to a whole new level through 2 major advances (a short thread):

The @erc.europa.eu just announced important updates to ERC grants coming with the 2026 and 2027 Work Programmes, in both proposal form and the evaluation process!

Here are the more significant changes: (1/5)

Touch down in Chicago for the 50th Society For Biomaterials Annual Meeting! 🛬

If you're around do stop by our session on “Microfluidics and Biomaterials for Engineering 3D In Vitro Models” tomorrow at 1 PM, where I’ll also be presenting some of our latest (and unpublished 👀) work!

New FCT Research Grant Approved!! 🥳

Very happy to receive notice of funding approval for the IC&DT research grant I proposed as Principal Investigator (my first in that capacity!)

These are the larger national research grants which are attributed on a regular basis in Portugal.

Just read this publication on @science.org and was finally pushed to create a Bluesky account

Looking forward to connect with the scientific community in here!

If that's you, reach out!!