Mateus Webba da Silva holds a PhD in Chemistry from Exeter University (1996). He was a Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), and Senior Research Associate at Duke University (USA) before taking up an academic appointment at Ulster University in 2005. He is currently Reader of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Ulster University, a position that he has held since 2011. Dr Webba da Silva's main research interests are in understanding nucleic acids self-assembly, their biological implications and  applications. He is member of editorial boards of the journals Scientific Reports and International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Dr Webba da Silva is a recipient of Ulster University’s Distinguished Research Fellowship (2012), and was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy, having served in its ‘Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences Committee’  since 2014. He is Head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Group of the Biomedical Science Research Institute.