Tiago Mendes Ferreira

Tiago Mendes Ferreira completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, specializing in Theoretical Chemistry. He was then awarded an international PhD fellowship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, which he undertook under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Topgaard at the University of Lund, Sweden. During his PhD studies (2009–2013), he gained expertise in experimental solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) and all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, combining both methods to investigate liquid crystalline systems.

After two postdoctoral positions in Germany—first at the University of Paderborn with Prof. Claudia Schmidt, and later with Prof. Kay Saalwächter at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU)—he was awarded a Temporary Principal Investigator research grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2018, he became a Junior Research Group Leader at MLU. During his time at MLU, he focused extensively on the quantum description of solid-state NMR experiments, including dipolar recoupling techniques and dipolar relaxation, as well as on teaching NMR to undergraduates and PhD students in international NMR schools. In September 2024, he moved to CiQUS and the Department of Physical Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela as a “Ramón y Cajal” fellow.

Tiago Mendes Ferreira is a leading expert in the characterization of lipid membranes using ssNMR and MD simulations. He has delivered numerous invited lectures at international conferences and NMR schools and has been the principal investigator for the NMR experiments in the major collaborative NMRlipids initiative. His current research focuses on implementing and optimizing ssNMR methodology for the characterization of complex membrane systems that have previously been out of reach at the molecular level.