Biography
Research Associate at the Papathanasiou Lab, Department of Chemical Engineering, at Imperial College London specializing in Process Systems Engineering.
Previously, I was a PhD student at Kontoravdi Lab where I worked on Bioprocess Systems Modelling
Our work has been featured in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN).
Education
PhD in Chemical Engineering
2021 — 2025Imperial College London
Supervised by Prof. Cleo Kontoravdi. Dissertation on Leveraging Metabolism For Cell Culture Modelling.
MSc Chemical Engineering
2017 — 2019Instituto Superior Tecnico
Dissertation on nonlinear model predictive control application at Process Systems Enterprise (now Siemens PSE).
Exchange Semester Chemical Engineering
2017 — 2018Eindhoven University of Technology
BSc Chemical Engineering
2014 — 2017Instituto Superior Tecnico
Selected Publications
Mariana Monteiro, Morrissey James, Cleo Kontoravdi (2026). CellTarget: a convex optimisation approach to discover cellular objectives. NPJ Systems Biology and Applications.
Mariana Monteiro, Konstantinos Flevaris, Cleo Kontoravdi (2025). From titer to quality: Exploring reinforcement learning for bioprocess control in silico. Computers & Chemical Engineering.
Miriam Sarkis, Mariana Monteiro, Andrea Bernardi, Ranjith Chiplunkar, Cleo Kontoravdi, Maria M Papathanasiou (2025). Sustainable by design: A first attempt on bioprocessing. Computers & Chemical Engineering.
Mariana Monteiro, Fengqi You, Cleo Kontoravdi (2025). Bilevel Optimisation for Targeted Metabolic Network Reduction. Proceedings of the 14th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, including Biosystems DYCOPS 2025: Bratislava, Slovakia, 16-19 June 2025 (DYCOPS).
Mariana Monteiro, Cleo Kontoravdi (2024). Bioprocess Control: A Shift in Methodology Towards Reinforcement Learning. Proceedings of the 34th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering / 15th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering(ESCAPE 34/PSE 15).
Mariana Monteiro, Sarah Fadda, Cleo Kontoravdi (2023). Towards advanced bioprocess optimization: A multiscale modelling approach. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal.
Mariana Monteiro, Cleo Kontoravdi (2023). Hybrid dynamic model of monoclonal antibody production using CHO cells. Proceedings of the 33rd European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering(ESCAPE 33).
Projects
CellTarget: A convex optimisation approach to discover cellular objectives
A computational framework designed to infer cellular objective functions from experimental flux data. By leveraging convex optimization under partial observability, the package enables researchers to identify metabolic goals in both reduced and genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs). It integrates Bayesian optimization for hyperparameter space exploration and automated benchmark utilities.
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