Pedro L. Granja was born in 1970, in Porto, Portugal. His high school studies took place in Porto, Portugal, and São Paulo, Brazil. He graduated in Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Porto (UP) in 1993 and obtained his PhD in Engineering Sciences in 2001 as a result of studies carried out at INEB Instituto de Engenharia Biomedica (UP) and INSERM U.1026 BIOTIS (University of Bordeaux, France). He carried out post-doctoral studies at INEB, was visiting scientist at the University of Michigan (USA, 2004) and Invited Professor at the University Paris 13 (France, 2009). He is presently Scientific Coordinator of INEB, Deputy Coordinator of the Host Interaction and Response Program at i3S Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Invited Auxiliary Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of UP (FEUP), and Affiliated Professor at Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS, Faculty of Medicine). His research interests lie at the intersection between materials science, biology and medicine, namely on the development of biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. His main research focus is on the molecular design of biofunctional hydrogels as artificial 3D extracellular matrices by mimicking some of its key natural features. He received the 2006 Jean Leray Award by the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB) and is internationally reputed as founder (1998) and Editor-in-Chief of the Biomaterials Network (Biomat.net), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biomatter. He serves as expert for several national and international funding agencies, organizations and companies. So far he has authored more than 63 articles in international journals, 2 books, 10 book chapters, 2 patents and presented over 140 invited lectures worldwide. At present he has an h-index of 25 (Google Scholar) and his publications have been cited almost 2000 times.
