(Chemical) Bonding is what makes life possible

Iola F. Duarte is a Principal Researcher in cell metabolism and metabolomics at LAQV-REQUIMTE (Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, UA). She holds a degree in Biochemistry and Food Chemistry (UA) and a PhD in Chemistry (UA, 2003). After postdoctoral work in collaborations between CICECO-UA and Imperial College London (2003–2006) and between CICECO-UA and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (2006–2007), she became an Assistant Researcher at UA in 2007 under the FCT Ciência 2007 programme. In 2015, she became a Principal Investigator with support from the FCT Investigador and CEEC programmes, and she has held a permanent position at UA since 2020.
Her current research focuses on: (i) tumour and immune cell metabolism; (ii) metabolic activity within the tumour microenvironment; (iii) microbiota–metabolome interactions in cancer and therapy response; (iv) metabolic signatures of drug-, phytochemical-, and nanomaterial-induced toxicity and efficacy; and (v) integrating cell metabolomics into the evaluation of biomimetic 3D in vitro models.
By the end of 2025, I.F. Duarte had published 115+ peer-reviewed papers with 5,000+ citations (h-index 44; Scopus) and delivered ~30 invited talks. She has coordinated seven competitively funded projects and contributed to 16 others, supervised researchers and students across all levels, and hosted 11 international visitors (e.g., Erasmus+). She held visiting positions at the University of Bari (2019) and the University of Campinas (2023), and was featured in Mulheres na Ciência by Ciência Viva (2021).