Team
João Vareda
Senior Technician PhD
João Vareda received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Coimbra in 2022. His research has focused on the synthesis of hybrid and composite silica aerogels and their application in thermal insulation, sorptive processes and energy storage. In his PhD he studied the purification of heavy metal laden water by adsorption.
In 2024, João was featured in the list of the top 2% most cited scientists by Ioannidis and Elsevier, considering the impact of a single year. He has received two grants to kickstart his research ideas with project AeroMCatch – Silica Aerogels for Remediation of Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metal (Programa de Estímulo à Investigação 2015, Calouste Gubenkian Foundation) and project AeroNaLyte – Silica-Polymer Composite Aerogels As Solid Sodium Electrolytes (Projeto Semente de Investigação Interdisciplinar 2023, Santander and University of Coimbra).
Currently, he is studying novel polymeric platforms, based on biopolymers, for gene delivery.