简介
Mara G. Freire graduated in Chemistry in 2003 by the University of Aveiro, Portugal, receiving the “Best Chemistry Student Award” from Dow Portugal. In 2007 she completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering, branch of Bioengineering, by the University of Aveiro, with trainees at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France, followed by post-doctoral activities at ITQB2, New University of Lisbon, Portugal. In 2013, Freire returned as an Assistant Researcher to the University of Aveito, and from 2014-2025 she was a Coordinating Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Currently, Freire is Full Professor at the University of Aveiro, and Vice-Director of CICECO. 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 Subject Chair of the Content Selection Advisory Board (CSAB) from Scopus.
Freire published +370 papers in peer reviewed journals, +30 book chapters and two books, and has +23,000 citations and h-index of 82. She coordinated/participated in +30 R&D projects, among which two European Research Council (ERC) grants and 2 PathFinder projects from the European Innovation Council (EIC). Up to date, Freire has completed the supervision of 25 junior researchers or post-doctoral researchers, and 28 PhD, 72 MSc and 53 BSc students.
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.
Freire is the co-founder the RYAPURTECH spin-off. She has filled 19 national/international patents (5 licensed). 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.
