Luzia Mendes obtained her degree in Dental Medicine from the Faculty of Dental Medicine at the University of Porto (FMDUP), Portugal, in 2007. She completed a postgraduate course in Periodontology at FMDUP in 2009 and her Doctorate in Dental Medicine in 2016, also at FMDUP. Currently, she holds the position of Invited Assistant Professor at the same institution, where she has been teaching for several years. As a researcher, her main focus is on periodontal diseases, specifically the use of nucleic acid mimics to study complex multi-species biofilms.