Madalena Costa was born in Lisbon, November 15, 1969. The driving general theme of her academic career has been to understand the nonlinear dynamics and fundamental mechanisms of complex systems. Her specific focus is in biomedical applications, including the development of methods to quantify multiscale properties of complex signals, models of physiologic control that account for these properties under healthy conditions and their changes with pathology and aging, and novel clinical indexes for risk stratification and monitoring of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions. Her work is, hence, at the interdisciplinary crossroads of contemporary physics, bioengineering, physiology, biology and bedside medicine.