Madeira Chemistry Research Centre
The Madeira Chemistry Research Centre (Centro de Química da Madeira, CQM)1, is a research unit located in University of Madeira 2, Madeira Island 3, Portugal. Supported by the Portuguese Research Foundation, FCT, since 2004, the Research Centre has a research staff of 16 Ph Ds in a total of 30 researchers and develops collaborative projects with other research units and Universities in Portugal and abroad. The only scientific evaluation made to the Centre was based in the proposal presented to FCT for its creation, in 2002, and the result was “GOOD” at that time. As a result of this evaluation, the Research Centre now integrates two National Networks: Mass Spectrometry(REDE/1508/REM/2005) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (REDE/1517/RMN/2005). Under this program, the Research Centre received this year a 400 MHz Bruker UltraShield Plus NMR and a Esquire 6000 LCMSMS equipment.
Currently, the ongoing research projects are directed towards applied investigation with high local impact, such as studies on the evaluation and improvement of Madeira wine, the chemical characterization and pharmaceutical potential evaluation of products extracted from endemic plants, and also directed to most emergent and demanding fields, such as the design and synthesis of new drugs from bioactive natural analogues, gene delivery, tissue engineering, molecular modeling and nanochemistry for electronic and biomedical applications.
Beyond research activities, CQM participates in undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate Education at the University of Madeira (8 Ph D students are currently performing their studies at CQM labs) and gives scientific and technical support to companies and institutions located in Madeira Island in the general area of chemistry and biochemistry. CQM’s team is also strongly committed with science spreading activities with the objective of encouraging new talents among the young people in Science, mainly in the areas of Chemistry and Biochemistry and also having in mind the improvement of the scientific culture of the general population of Madeira4.