Cátia Afonso holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering and a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, completed in 2016 and 2018, respectively. During her master’s studies, she worked on the extraction of bioactive compounds from natural cork using supercritical CO2, as well as on the evaluation of their retention in molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). She started her research fellow activities in February 2021 at the Institute for Polymers and Composites (IPC) of the University of Minho, within the Factory of the Future: Intelligent Manufacturing initiative, where she collaborated with BOSCH on the development of thermoelectric composite materials. In February 2022, she continued as a research fellow at the Physics Department of the University of Minho under the NanoAir project, focusing on the development and optimization of semiconductor materials for photocatalytic air purification applications. In January 2023, she joined CICECO – Aveiro Institute of Materials at the University of Aveiro as a research fellow, working in collaboration with Amorim Cork, S.A., on the GCORK project focused on developing sustainable agglomerated cork stoppers through ecological and innovative processing technologies. She has experience in materials processing (including biomaterials and polymers), in the extraction of phenolic compounds using supercritical CO2, and in a broad range of materials characterization techniques. She was awarded Best Student of the Biological and Chemical Engineering Course in the year 2015/2016. She is currently a PhD student in Chemical Engineering focused on the sustainable recovery of metals from electronic waste.