BEYOND THE LAB COAT: Bruno Sarmento
Bruno Sarmento is a recent member of INEB and heads the Nanomedicine-based therapies and diagnosis research team with 15 members. His high enthusiasm and passion to science and the cooperative spirit that he transfers to his team made them one of the most productive teams with an outstanding number of publications within these two years.
Bruno was born in Lamego, August 25th, 1978. He is graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Porto (2002) and completed the PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Porto in 2007, with staying at the Queen’s University of Kingston, Canada (January 2004–December 2004), University of Copenhagen, Denmark (May 2005–July 2005) and University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (February 2006–August 2006).
From 2007 to 2012 Bruno was awarded with a Post-Doc fellowship from FCT at the University of Porto, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen. Since 2008 he became Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior de Ciências da Saúde-Norte.
In February 2012, Professor Mário Barbosa and Pedro Granja were the main responsible for Bruno’s entrance at INEB, accepting his project and their will of embrace a challenge, surrounded by competitors to elevate Bruno in science.
Bruno’s research has been focused on the development of functionalized nanomedicines and their application in the pharmaceutical and biomedical fields. They use in vitro cell models as a tool to evaluate the transport of drugs and nanoparticles and perform in vitro/in vivo correlation. In particular, they have been specializing in mucosal tissue engineering models for validation of new functionalized nanoparticles for diagnosis and therapy.
Main Challenge
My inspiration in science is helping in improving the efficacy of well-established and efficient drugs into outstanding products in the R&D Process, employing nanomedicines for exceptional drug bioavailability and target. Side-tools and biological platforms are parallel interests.
My motivation is to build scientific projects, gather adrenaline and creativity, until its approval.
All my research activities make sense if surrounded by a group of exceptional scientists with whom I have the luck and the pleasure of working with.
INEB in one word
Challenging! Challenging because it was a challenge for me to integrate a research institute outside my box, outside my comfort zone. Challenging because rather than being creative to survive, INEB is (bio) inspired to enlarge and reinforce itself.
Beyond the lab coat...
Outside the lab, I teach Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Technology for pharmaceutical students, which is highly rewarding.
Due to my professional activities, I am lucky enough to travel a lot! I have been on the five continents (I am one of those that loves fly!), and had the opportunity to witness the greatness and the beauty that our planet offers to us, and the man turned, almost always for the better!
But nothing like home! One of my greatest pleasures is fishing in the rivers of the mountains of North of Portugal. I love to raid the desert tracks and wild rivers in search of trouts, stopping to enjoy the wonderful local cuisine and breathtaking landscapes.
The Movie
The Silence of the Lambs
The Book
A cidade e as serras, from Eça de Queirós
The Trip
Fly to Argentina and climb all the America by car to Canada! Half of the trip is done, I was in Argentina and Canada, miss the most challenging and unknown part…
If I wasn’t a scientist, I would be...
…or I would like to be, TV director. I like the backstage, the feeling of being behind what most people see, pick up a camera and shoot the detail, the magic of conditioning the reality without misrepresenting, the stress of “TV live”!