Prof Anna Sandak is the leader of the Materials Department and Deputy Director for Science at InnoRenew CoE in Slovenia. She is also an associate professor at the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies of the University of Primorska. She was recently nominated by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and joined the AcademiaNET. In 2022 Dr Sandak was awarded the ERC consolidator grant for the project ARCHI-SKIN (101044468-ERC-2021-COG), which aims to push the boundaries of traditional materials toward the development of engineered living materials. Her passion is to research biomimetic solutions for designing new materials.