Silvia Mihaila obtained her bachelor degree in chemistry and physics in Romania. She then pursued her PhD degree at the University of Minho (Portugal) under the prestigious MIT-Portugal Program focusing on TE strategies for bone vascularization (2015). After that, she continued her academic trajectory as a Marie Curie postdoc fellow at the Department of Urology of Radboud UMC (Nijmegen, NL) where she used synthetic biomimetic matrix to stir the differentiation potential of stem cells. In 2017, she moved to UMC Utrecht to embark in a project related to the development of a bioartificial kidney unit based on bioengineered hollow membranes. Since March 2021, Silvia is an assistant professor of in vitro models of disease at the Department of Pharmacology of Utrecht University. Her work aims to develop humanized in vitro models to replicate pathological complications associated with kidney injury failure in the pursuit of unraveling mechanisms of disease and potential therapeutic targets