2018-04-16

Nelly Garcia Gonzalez is a new postdoc at IMES. Get to know her through three quick questions:

What brings you to Lund?

I had the great opportunity to collaborate at IMES as a visiting PhD student during my PhD program. Since then, I thought about the possibility to come back and improve in my professional career as researcher with a great team.

What is your background?

I concluded my studies in chemical engineering at Polytechnic of Valencia in Spain and I developed the master thesis as a junior researcher at the Athlone Institute of Technology in Ireland. My strong motivation to work in the research world was born at this moment. Then my researcher experience has continued growing during the years I was a PhD student at Polytechnic of Milan in Italy. During this period, I was also a visiting student at IMES as part of my PhD program. Now, I am a Doctor in materials engineering. I have been able to develop my interest in different polymer systems obtained from renewable sources and its manufacturing through various technologies related to the coating industry. This concept was based on the principles of green engineering, green chemistry and sustainability (especially LCA studies) for materials such as lignin, polyurethanes and polyesters. Moreover, I had the opportunity to attend several national and international congresses and publish scientific articles in international journals, which contributed to improve my professional experience and work as a researcher.

What motivates you to work on sustainability assessments of new biomass utilization pathways?

I'm passionate about contributing in this area since biomass is the only renewable source of organic carbon that can be used directly for fuel or converted to other carbon-based chemicals and fuels by downstream processing. Therefore, biomass offers some attractive properties which make interesting it to be researched and go deeper into it.