Researcher at CICECO/LSRE-LCM/CIMO receives award for best European thesis in Thermodynamics

Mónia Martins won the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) Excellence Award for the best doctoral thesis in the area of Thermodynamics and Transport Properties. The work entitled Studies for the Development of New Separation Processes with Terpenes and Their Environmental Distribution gave new insights on separation processes for this class of compounds of enormous relevance in cosmetic, pharmaceutical or food industries.

The award-winning work, guided by Prof. João Coutinho from CICECO at UA, and Prof. Simão Pedro Pinho from LSRE-LCM/CIMO at IPB, is related to the extraction of terpenes from natural sources and their subsequent separation and purification as well as to their fate in the environment. The evaluation committee highlighted the originality of the studied topic and methodology followed, innovation, industrial relevance, and scientific impact of the work.

Dr. Mónia Martins is currently researcher at the Laboratories LSRE-LCM/CIMO and CICECO where she has been developing new solvents with applications on metal extraction or for the separation and purification of bioactive compounds.

The 2019 Excellence Award will be presented next June at the 26th Thermodynamics Conference, in Huelva, where Dr. Mónia Martins will deliver an invited talk.