Bio

Cátia Afonso holds a Chemical and Biological Engineering degree with a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering, both concluded at Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. During her master's, she worked on the extraction of bioactive compounds from natural cork, using supercritical CO2, and also on the assessment of the retention of these compounds in molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). In February 2021, Cátia joined the Institute for Polymers and Composites (IPC) from the University of Minho (Factory of the Future: Smart Manufacturing) as a research fellow, working in cooperation with BOSCH company, on the development of thermoelectric composites. In February 2022, Cátia has joined the Physics Department of the University of Minho in the project NanoAir - Nanomaterials Applied in Innovative Road Pavements for Air Cleaning. In January 2023, Cátia joined CICECO - Aveiro Materials Institute, at University of Aveiro, as a researcher, working in cooperation with the company Amorim Cork, S.A., on the GCORK project - "Development of agglomerated cork stoppers with Bio adhesives and surface treatments, produced by greener and more sustainable processes," under the supervision of Prof. Carlos Silva and Prof. Inês Portugal at the Department of Chemistry and CICECO, University of Aveiro. Currently, Cátia is a Chemical Engineering PhD student working on the development of the recovery of metals thought Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) under the supervision of Dr. Cláudia Batista Lopes and Prof. Carlos M. Silva.