Speakers

Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Granada and member of the Research Group: NanoTech – Nanomaterials and Sustainable Chemical Technologies, teaches various undergraduate, doctoral and master's programs, as well as specialization courses in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and materials science. His research focuses on the design of advanced nanomaterials and the study of their performance as adsorbents, sensors or thermal, electro or photocatalysts for the production/storage of clean energy, green chemistry synthesis processes and, mainly, environmental processes for the treatment of water and/or air effluents. 

Since 1990, he has been involved in the development of research projects with national or international public funding, sometimes in collaboration with companies in the industrial sector. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 1993 (with honours, Award to the best doctorate) and completed a fruitful postdoctoral fellowship at IST in Lisbon (1993-96), allowing a close collaboration along 30 years with various high-level Portuguese research groups, to whom he will always be grateful.

https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=arCuH5gAAAAJ&hl=es

https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-2468-8407

https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7003289379

Antonio Leyva-Pérez was born and grew up in Seville (Spain). He studied Chemistry at the University of Valencia. After that, he carried out the Ph.D. on heterogeneous catalysis under the supervision of Prof. Hermenegildo García at the

“Instituto de Tecnología Química” (ITQ) in The Polythecnic University of Valencia. His thesis received the Special Award of the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 2006. After a short stay in the M.I.T. at Prof. Steven L. Buchwald ́s laboratories, working in organometallics, he did post–doctoral studies in the Chemistry Department of The University of Cambridge at Prof. Steven Ley ́s group working in the total synthesis of the complex natural products isobongregic acid and epyriculol.

In 2008, he returned to the ITQ to work with Prof. Avelino Corma. After receiving a Tenure-track research contract in 2014, and a Distinguished Research permanent position in 2016, he works independently as a Scientific Researcher of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) at the ITQ.

Antonio is the leader of the group Catalysis for Sustainable Organic Reactions Group (https://catsusorg-itq.webs.upv.es/), where he directs >20 researchers (PhDs and postdocs). He holds nearly 160 publications in the field of catalysis and organic chemistry (h index 53, google scholar), and he also actively collaborates with international chemical companies, with >25

patents and 4 processes under exploitation in industrial plants.

Investigadora Coordenadora do LNEC – Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil, Chefe do Núcleo de Engenharia Sanitária desde 2015. Doutorada em Engenharia Química, é especialista em qualidade, tratamento e reutilização de água

Rui C. Martins obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Coimbra in 2011, where he also completed his degree in 2006 and habilitation in 2024. He is currently an Associate Professor with habilitation at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Coimbra.

His research focuses on applying Separation and Reaction Engineering to environmental remediation. During his PhD, he co-founded Adventech, a University of Coimbra spin-off dedicated to developing integrated technologies for liquid and gaseous effluent treatment. In 2019, he co-founded Envitecna, a company focused on environmental protection equipment.

He has coordinated several research projects, including the Horizon Europe project H2OforAll, aimed at improving drinking water treatment. He is currently Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, President of PRODEQ (Association for Chemical Engineering Development), and regional representative at the Portuguese Order of Engineers' College of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Dr Inês Graça is a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, and currently the Director of Postgraduate Taught Teaching, in the School of Engineering at the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom). She holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal) and the University of Poitiers (France). Since 2007, she has been working in the field of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering. Her research focuses on the design and optimisation of multi-functional, nanostructured heterogeneous catalysts, particularly metal-promoted zeolites and hierarchical zeolites, to enable sustainable routes for waste conversion. Her core expertise includes carbon dioxide capture and utilisation, biomass valorisation, and the upcycling of plastic waste into value-added products. She is especially interested in creating synergies between different waste‑derived resources, using them both as inputs for catalyst design and as feedstocks for innovative, low‑carbon processes. Inês is an early-career board member of the Carbon Capture Science & Technology journal by Elsevier and a member of the editorial board of the Industrial Catalysis section in Catalysts. She has currently over 50 research papers and a h-index of 31.