Ana is a Unilever/BBSRC Case PhD student working under the supervision of Professor Paul Sharpe and Dr Ana Angelova Volponi at the Centre for Craniofacial and Regenerative Biology in collaboration with Dr Veronica Booth from the Periodontology department.

She obtained her undergraduate dentistry degree in Lisbon and continues to pursue her clinical practice alongside her PhD. She completed her MSc in Regenerative Dentistry with distinction at King’s College London working on the tooth bioengineering project by studying different three-dimensional cell culture methods to maintain the odontogenic capacity of mesenchymal cells.

Her PhD project studies the human gingival tissue microenvironment using transcriptomics to compare how individual cell types change in response to periodontitis.