Carlos A. Pinto is a 31-year-old PhD graduate in Biotechnology from the University of Aveiro (UA) that defended his PhD thesis on 15th July 2024 and began his academic journey at UA, completing bachelor’s/master’s (with specialization in Food Biotechnology) degrees in Biotechnology in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Since 2015, Carlos has been working with high pressure processing (HPP) for nonthermal food pasteurization (a current commercially increasing pasteurization process) and in novel recent pressure-based food preservation/storage processes, like hyperbaric storage (HS), envisaging the possible replacement of refrigeration (RF) but at room temperature (RT) and hyperbaric inactivation (HI), foreseeing in this case vegetative microorganisms and spores inactivation also at RT. A few months before starting the bachelor Project (in 2015) he volunteered to work at Professor’s Jorge Saraiva lab, where he first contacted with young researchers and PhD students in the field of food technology and particularly HPP, and where he quickly developed his research interest for high pressure technology, leading him to pursue a MSc in Food Biotechnology and develop his thesis on HS to control bacterial spores’ development. In 2017, upon completing his MSc thesis, Carlos was a research fellow for 1 year in the project Algavalue, aiming using HPP for cold extraction of bioactive compounds from Aurantiochytrium sp., where he developed skills in chemistry (aside from food-related analyses) and extensive training on the operation and maintenance of HPP equipment. In 2018, Carlos was granted with a PhD Fellowship from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (ref. SFRH/BD/137036/2018, FCT) to study the potential of HS to control the development of bacterial and fungi spores, as an alternative to RF. During the PhD, Carlos was elected student representative at the Nonthermal Processing Division from the Institute of Food Technologists (NPD-IFT) from the United States of America (Chicago, USA), participating in events’ organization, monthly online meetings and in-person events (July 2019 in New Orleans (USA), November 2022 in Dublin (Ireland), October 2023 in Minneapolis (USA) and October 2025 in Beijing (China)). This allowed him to build an extensive network of collaboration with other PhD students from all around the world (and their respective supervisors), and industrial stakeholders sharing experiences and scientific knowledge. Upon completion of the PhD fellowship (in April 2023), Carlos enrolled in the project VIIAFood (ref. 01/C05-i09/2024.PC644929456-00000040), aiming to develop prototypes of new food products, where he remained until October 2025. So far, Carlos published more than 70 scientific articles (research and reviews), and 16 book chapters, in the field of emergent processing technologies, with special focus on HPP and HS, with more than 1772 citations (Scopus) and an h-index of 23. Carlos is highly experienced in microbiological analyses (general microorganisms, pathogens handling and manipulation, bacterial and fungi spores’ production, antimicrobial analyses, etc.), quantification of physicochemical parameters in foods (antioxidants, phenolic compounds, enzymatic activities, etc.). At the same time, Carlos also learnt about mathematical modelling using Matlab, to describe nonlinear microbial inactivation kinetics, using specific mathematical models (e.g. the Weibull, Log-logistic, Biphasic models, etc). Carlos also had the opportunity to explore the field of response surface methodology coupled with experimental design (Box-Behnken, central composite, etc.) to optimize extraction processes based on specific responses, using advanced software. With a problem-solving, multi-task mindset, Carlos developed also advanced skills on high pressure equipment’ operation and maintenance, ensuring that his work and the work from his lab peers would continue despite some technical issues that from time to time arise.