Mara G. Freire

Mara G. Freire graduated in Chemistry and completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering, being currently a Coordinating Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Freire is Vice-Director of CICECO, and Deputy Chair of the Scientific Council of the University of Aveiro. She is member of the European Academy of Sciences and of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. In addition to being member of several journal editorial boards, Freire is one of the Chairs of the Content Selection Advisory Board (CSAB) from Scopus.

Freire published +350 papers in peer reviewed journals, +30 book chapters and two books, and has +20,500 citations and h-index of 80. She coordinated/participated in +25 R&D projects, among which two European Research Council (ERC) grants and 2 PathFinder projects from the European Innovation Council (EIC). She has filled +15 national/international patents, has licensed 4 patents, and is the co-founder of the RYAPURTECH spin-off.

In addition to other awards and recognitions, Freire received the ECTP-NETZSCH Young Scientist Award in 2014, was recognized amongst the top 20 “Women in Science” in Portugal in 2016, was recognized as one of the 14 rising stars in the Green Chemistry field by the Green Chemistry journal in 2017, was recognized as one of the 100 women in Chemistry by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018, was awarded with the “Vicente de Seabra Medal” in 2018, received the Best Researcher Award from the University of Aveiro in 2021, and received the award “Professor Almiro e Castro” in 2023. Related to technology transfer and business ideas, she received the Born from Knowledge award by Agência Nacional de Inovação in the Health field in 2018, was finalist in the Everis Awards (2019) with the RYAPURTECH business case, was awarded (2021) with the spin-off RYAPURTECH by the Macao Young Entreperneur Incubation Centre (MYECI), and was one of the Women TechEU awardees in 2024.

Up to date, Freire has completed the supervision of 4 junior researchers, 20 post-doctoral researchers, and 25 PhD, 72 MSc and 49 BSc students.