The University of Aveiro (UA), a POLINA project partner and leading Portuguese public institution, has recruited Cristina Dias, a postdoctoral researcher to develop click-chemistry PAAs with light-responsive features. Cristina will contribute to the POLINA project through the development of novel light-responsive and bioorthogonal PAA biomaterials for advanced Living Materials fabrication. Her work will focus on the synthesis, functionalisation and characterisation of clickable PAA systems incorporating photoactivatable and photocleavable click-chemistry groups, enabling photolithographic assembly of 3D living architectures.

UA has joined the POLINA project in 2025, bringing their expertise with leading-edge research on engineered tissues using cell-polymer interfaces to POLINA’s mission of adapting high-resolution photolithography technologies for high-precision geometrical structuring of natural amino acids. In the context of the POLINA project, UA will synthetize PAAs with pendant groups for subsequent coupling of click-chemistry moieties, and lead the light-based fabrication of human Living Materials using these clickable polymers as bioorthogonal cell-interlinking macromolecules with light-configurable geometries.