Maria Clara Costa, PhD in Technological Chemistry, Associate Professor of the Chemistry and Pharmacy Department of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Algarve. She is a senior researcher of CCMAR, leader of the Environmental Technologies Research Team of ECOREACH research group.
Her research includes the development of chemical and biologic technologies (relying on the search of bacterial communities and isolates from terrestrial aquatic and marine samples including those from extreme environments) for environmental remediation: treatment of metal-bearing wastewaters, domestic wastewaters and other effluents with relevance on emerging pollutants (e.g. metals, pharmaceuticals and microplastics) addressing global ecological challenges.
The recovery of metals, with emphasis on the critical ones, from secondary sources using green approaches, based, as much as possible, on the utilization of waste and resulting in functional materials (e.g. nanomaterials with environmental applications) is nowadays an important topic of her research aiming to contribute to the circular economy and to a more sustainable society.
She has participated in various national and international projects, has supervised several PhD researchers, 5 PhD students, and has great experience in the supervision of master students. She has more than one hundred papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has a cumulative h-index of 26 (in Scopus).
