Ana Rita C. Duarte will present on April 12, 2023, at 4:30 pm, at the room EA008, a lecture entitled "What is the role of eutectic solvents in the development of biomaterials for biomedical applications?".
Ana Rita C. Duarte was born in Lisbon in 1978. Currently Associate Professor with habillitation at the Chemistry Department from Nova School of Science and Technology. She was previsously Research Assistant at the 3B’s research group at Universidade do Minho, where she worked for 10 years. She graduated in Chemical Engineering by Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2002 and completed her PhD on Exploring supercritical fluid technology for the preparation of controlled drug delivery systems in 2006 by the same University. In 2006/2007 she was a researcher at Techniche Universiteit Delft, The Netherlands.
The International Society for Advancement of Supercritical Fluids granted her thesis the Best Thesis Award in 2007. In 2013 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholar to support her stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, where she was for a period of 6 months. she has been the PI and/or co-PI of 5 Projects funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. In 2016 she was awarded an ERC consolidator grant entitled: DES.solve – When Solids Become Liquids: Natural Deep Eutectic solvents for Chemical Process Engineering, to proceed the developments on green technologies. This 5 year project was funded by the European Research Council with 1,87 million euros. In 2022 she was awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant to pursue one of the technologies developed withing DES Solve. At the moment she is supervising and/or co-supervising 1 Master thesis, 5 + 2 PhD Students and leading a team of nearly 15 researchers. In 2018, co-founded Des Solutio, a spin-off company from FCT-NOVA which aims to develop safer and greener alternatives to the chemicals that are usually used in the production of beauty, pharmaceutical, personal care and other products. She is the Action Chair of COST Action Greenering which involves more than 250 participants from 34 different countries.
At the moment, she has 167 papers listed in scopus with a total of 6034 citations, and an h-index of 41. Her main research interests are the use of green technologies for the development of biomaterials. In particular, the use of water, and supercritical fluids together with the exploration of natural deep eutectic solvents for pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications.