Catarina Franco Jones is a PhD student in the Department of Electronics and Computer Sciences at the University of Southampton.  She is also affiliated to the Institute for Life Sciences. 

She graduated in 2023 from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon, Portugal) with a Master Degree in Biomedical Engineering. She then worked as a junior researcher at the same institution, where she employed piezoelectric nanoparticles as nanoantennaes to electrically induce selective apoptosis of breast cancer cells in vitro, under ultrasound stimulation. Her results were published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. During this time, she also acted as the Chair of the IEEE EMBS Student Chapter at Instituto Superior Técnico. She receved several awards including "Best Master Thesis in Oncology and Precision Medicine" in Portugal, Best Poster Award at the Cambridge Bioelectronics Symposium 2023, and a Best Early Career Researcher Award at the Nanotexnology Conference 2024, Greece.

Her PhD research at the University of Southampton focuses on investigating the electromechanical features and migration dynamics of single breast cancer cells and cell clusters. She is skilled in cell culture, chemical synthesis, and nanomaterial characterisation. In Southampton, she gains experience in nanofabrication techniques, patch-clamp electrophysiology, live-cell imaging, and advanced image processing.