Dr. Pedro Costa is a researcher, inventor, educator, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder, CEO, and CTO of BIOFABICS (www.biofabics.com), a company specialized in the creation of 3D biotissue analogues. Through BIOFABICS, Dr. Costa aims to fully democratize access to biofabrication and organ-on-chip technologies by empowering researchers with advanced manufacturing capabilities and user-friendly software tools.

Academic and Professional Background
Prior to founding BIOFABICS, Dr. Costa coordinated the world’s first MSc Programme in Biofabrication at Utrecht University. He also managed the Utrecht Biofabrication Facility and served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Dr. Costa is best described as a biologist by training and an engineer/maker by heart. His background includes undergraduate studies in Applied Biology followed by a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. He specializes in combining highly automated tools, such as additive manufacturing (3D bioprinting and electrospinning) and bioreactor technologies, for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
His professional experience spans both academic and industrial environments, including the University of Minho (Portugal), the company Materialise NV (Belgium), the Queensland University of Technology (Australia), and the Technical University of Munich (Germany). He has also been regularly hosted as a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Medical School (USA).

Awards and Leadership
Dr. Costa has received several prestigious awards for his work, including the 2014 Translational Award (European Society for Biomaterials), the 2016 Young Investigator Award (2nd place) (International Society for Biofabrication), the 2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme) and was finalist in the Innovation Radar Award 2020 for the Innovative Science prize category.
Under Dr. Costa’s leadership, BIOFABICS has become a pivotal member (as partner and coordinator) in many EU-funded research projects and has established a large network of scientific and industrial collaborators. This network shares the common mission of developing more efficient tissue/organ models and therapies.