04-11-2022
In the last edition of the Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge, all the finalists from the PhD category were students from NOVA School of Science and Technology. Last October 26th the final results were known with our students winning the second and third places.
In the second position, Catarina Sousa, PhD student in Bioenergy, presented the thesis "Bioremediation of agro-industrial effluents mediated by microalgae" where she defends the application of a pre-treatment using the effluents produced by animals with biomass ash, a sustainable solution for the management of this waste that remains a technological challenge.
Inês Cunha, PhD student in Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences, in ex aequo in second place, presented the thesis "Finding Inspiration in Nature Towards Sustainable Development". To address the challenge of zero e-waste, the student proposes a new generation of smart inks and sustainable adhesives based on materials such as cellulose that can be integrated into electronic devices.
The third position was taken by Sirazul Haque. The student of the PhD programme in Advanced Materials and Processing presented the thesis "Optically thick but electrically thin solar cells: For portable and flexible electronic applications". In this work the student presented two novel photonic concepts with the objective to highly efficient and ultra-thin perovskite solar cells (PSCs).
The Fraunhofer Portugal Challenge is an ideas competition, organized since 2010, which intends to distinguish students from Portuguese universities who have developed Master's or Doctoral theses of excellence.
