Suellen Pereira Espíndola

How can we mine resources from waste and wastewater and boost the circular economy
More specifically, I could make a connection of this broader topic with my current PhD research on the production of novel high-end materials from a biopolymer harvested/produced from wastewater sludge.

Suellen Pereira Espíndola
Female, 26
PhD Candidate Advanced Soft Matter, Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology
MSc
High-end sustainable materials from sewage                   

Biography 
Graduated on Environmental Engineering (BSc) by the Federal University of Uberlandia (Brazil), in 2015, where she carried out research on the field of soil biochemistry and microbiology. The main working project being "Reference biochemical values from soils of the Brazilian Cerrado". During her bachelor studies, she did a one-year exchange study at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands, via the Science without Borders programme. At this time, she was also guest research at the sanitary engineering section at Delft University of Technology, studying the topic of degradation of humic susbtances by white rot fungi. She got her master's degree on Water Technology at WETSUS (European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology), with distiction cum lauda. During this period, she got experienced in the fields of wastewater treatment, resource recovery and material science. Currently, she does her PhD research on the topic "Alginate-Like-Exopolymers (ALE) micro and nano-composites" in the chemical engineering department of Delft University of Technology.

FameLab entry reasons 
I hope to learn and develop skills on scientific storytelling by addressing my research topic to a small audience. I find this sort of skills very relevant as a good researcher should know how to draw attention for his/her ideas. I find that explaining our own research to the general public is also a good exercise for obtaining a helicopter view of the project and even gaining new insights.