Francisca A. e Silva is currently a Researcher at CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal. She completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering with honors at the University of Aveiro in 2018 and was awarded the “Best PhD thesis in Chemical Engineering” by the Iberoamerican Congress in Chemical Engineering. During her PhD, she spent three months abroad at McGill University, Canada. She is author/coauthor of 25 articles, 1 encyclopaedia entry and 2 book chapters. Her research is centred on the use of ionic liquids for the development of sustainable purification processes towards environmental and health applications.Ana C.A. Sousa is currently an assistant professor at the Biology Department University of Évora, Portugal and a researcher at the Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHRC). She graduated in Biology from the University of Aveiro and holds a PhD in Biology from the same institution. During her PhD and Post-Doctoral activities, devoted to environmental monitoring and toxicology, she worked at several foreign institutions, including the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG), Switzerland; Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Japan; National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan, Colorado School of Mines, USA and more recently Hokkaido University, Japan. She has published +40 articles, 7 book chapters, and 2 books. She works in the intersection of environmental health sciences and chemical sciences.João A. P. Coutinho is Full Professor at the Chemistry Department of University of Aveiro, Portugal, where he is director of CICECO, one of the leading European Laboratories in Materials Science. He leads a multidisciplinary research team that focuses on the development of green solvents and novel separation processes for biorefinery and circular economy. Currently he strives to apply biobased solvents, DES and ionic liquids to these processes and attempts to better understand their physical-chemical behavior. He supervised over 50 MSc, 30 PhD thesis and 25 Post Doctoral Fellows, authored over 700-refereed papers (h-factor 90, > 35000 citations) and 15 patents.Freire graduated in Chemistry in 2003 and completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2007 by University of Aveiro, Portugal. After several assignments abroad and post-doctoral activities at New University of Lisbon, since 2014 she is a Coordinator Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro. Freire is the Coordinator of Group 5 of CICECO and Deputy Chair of the Scientific Council of University of Aveiro. She is member of the Young Scientists Seminar of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. Freire published +250 scientific manuscripts, +25 book chapters and edited one book, and has +14,500 citations and h-index of 68. Freire coordinated/participated in 25 R&D projects, among which a Starting and a Proof of Concept Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). She has filled +10 national/international patents. She received several scientific awards as well as awards related with technology transfer and business ideas. Her research interests comprise the development of cost-effective separation processes for high-value compounds, most of the times resorting to ionic liquids.
