João Araújo Pereira Coutinho
born in 1969 in Marco de Canavezes João got his degree in Chemical Engineering at FEUP in 1992. He studied thermodynamics and oils at IVC-SEP, Technical University of Denmark, where it simultaneously discovered design and the modern architecture, the Japanese woodblock prints, and that the jazz can be a popular music. There he got his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1995 and it followed the oil track to Paris where in the French Institute of Petroleum (IFP) he realized that the freedom that he needs to be happy could hardly be found in a company. His first son brought him back to Portugal and the marriage took him to Aveiro where he discovered an University that makes him feeling as if he lived inside an architecture magazine. Here he created a multidisciplinary research group that had its initial impulse through a prize of the Gulbenkian Foundation. Their research areas range from the exploration and fossil fuel transport, to the production and formulation of biofuels, the characterization of non-conventional solvents for the development of new products and chemical processes, the characterization of biodegradable polymers and biotechnology. On this last domain he was one of the responsible people for the creation of the BSc and MSc in Biotechnology at the University of Aveiro. He is interested in the production of biosurfactants, bioremediation and studies of toxicity on model organisms and microorganisms of industrial interest.