Dr Silva graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Minho University (Portugal) and currently she is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. She has a research interest in the design of pharmaceutical platforms and technologies to improve the treatments of respiratory diseases and in the development of realistic in vitro models to assess the effects of toxicants in the lungs. Her expertise includes basic and applied research on the biology, pharmaceutical formulations and biomaterials science. Dr Silva maintains active research collaborations with academia and industry.