Group Members

Ms. Kimberly Garcia

Kimberly hails from the city of Baguio in the Philippines. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (cum laude) from the Institute of Chemistry, University of the Philippines-Diliman. After which, she worked as a university research assistant in the mass spectrometry facility embedded in the same institute. During this time, she worked in the service facility while also working on mass spectrometry-based metabolomics projects as applied to natural products discovery. She did her Master of Science in Kyoto University under the Monbukagakusho (MEXT) scholarship awarded by the Japanese government. There, she studied evolutionary biology of marine giant viruses in the Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research.  After which, she worked as a chemistry specialist for chemical journals and patents database excerption before coming to Maastricht University to start her PhD.

Mr. Mendel Szymanski

Mendel is a Circular Engineering bachelor's student coming from Hong Kong. He studied under the International Baccalaureate program in Island School, focusing on both chemistry and physics before joining Maastricht University.

Within his bachelor's, he has worked on circularity-based projects including testing chemical processes which extract cellulose from plant waste, creating a basic algorithm for identifying plastic types using FTIR analysis and designing a biosensor concept for detecting PFAS concentrations within bodies of water. He also has worked internships as a data scientist and in the sustainability department for an animal conservatory.

For his bachelor thesis, he joined Dr Sebastiaan Van Nuffel’s group to see how ToF-SIMS can identify PFAS contamination within concrete.

Dr. Sara Santos Bernardes

Sara is an Assistant Professor of General Pathology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. She holds a PhD in Experimental Pathology, having studied Oxidative Stress and Related Biomarkers in Patients with Primary and Metastatic Melanoma at the Molecular Pathology Lab, State University of Londrina, Brazil. Her primary research interests focus on elucidating the pathophysiology of cancer, particularly melanoma. Recently, Sara was awarded the Global BioImaging / Wellcome Trust “Imaging 4 All (i4A)” fellowship and will spend one year as a visiting researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Sebastiaan Van Nuffel at the Imaging Mass Spectrometry Division of the Maastricht Institute for Multimodal Molecular Imaging, Maastricht University, the Netherlands (July 2025 – June 2026). Her research centers on the spatial distribution of lipids in primary cutaneous melanoma samples using Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MALDI-MSI). Through this fellowship, she aims to build a strong foundation in molecular imaging and data analysis.