Work mission focuses on partnership with NOVA Lisbon University

School of Technology professor has meetings in Portugal to reactivate cooperation agreement

Photo: Archive personal

School of Technology professor and researcher Eduardo Cassel went on a work mission in November 2022 at the NOVA Lisbon University (UNL), Portugal, through PUCRS’s CAPES-PrInt Program. The partnership between PUCRS and the Portuguese university exists since 2008, with the cooperation between UNL’s School of Science and Technology and the Graduate Program in Engineering and Materials Technology (PGETEMA) in the theme of ionic liquids.

In 2018, a new cooperation between the institutions was started in the field of deep eutectic solvents, creating the opportunity for professor Cassel’s work mission and the sandwich doctorate of PUCRS student Victor Hugo Rodrigues, advised by UNL professor Ana Rita Duarte, in September 2022. The professor’s work was aimed at defining strategies for the development of research on Deep Eutectic Solvents applied to natural products and to capturing CO₂ and at strengthening relations.

Meetings were held with the team from UNL’s Innovation, Research & Impact Strategy Office (IRIS). At that moment, PUCRS’s CAPES-PrInt Program, PUCRS’s Technology Park and PUCRS as a whole were presented. On another occasion, Cassel met with the International Relations Division, were conditions and strategies were presented to resume the cooperation agreement between both universities. They also discussed the importance of encompassing the development of human resources at graduate level, the development of joint researches, and professors’, researchers’ and students’ mobility.

Photo: Archive personal

In addition to the meeting with professor Victor Rodrigues, Cassel also met with researchers Rita Duarte, Alexandre Paiva and Rita Craveiro from the DES.Solve research group to determine actions regarding advising the doctoral student and strategies on the topic of capturing CO₂ using deep eutectic solvents. The prospects of UNL professors’ mobility through the PrInt Program in 2023 were established, as well as the arrival of post-doctors who got their degree at FCT/UNL to work alongside PUCRS researchers.

Professor Cassel went on the work mission through the International Cooperation Project “Technology, Energy and Natural Resources: New Paths to Sustainability,” linked to the Priority Theme “Technology and Biodiversity.”