Isabel Cabrita

Coordinating Researcher

CERENA-DGEG

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Isabel Cabrita is Portuguese, born in Lisbon in 1952, and has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering by the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. She started her professional career as a lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering in Oporto University in Portugal, in 1981, and in 1983 she moved to Lisbon to take the role of Head of department focusing on fuels and combustion technologies, in the State Laboratory for Engineering and Industrial Technology (LNETI), after INETI and in 2009, in LNEG, as a research coordinator in the domain of Bioenergy. In May 1st 2015, she moved to the Portuguese Directorate General of Energy and Geology (DGEG) and took the responsibility of implementing research to aid decision making and policy definition, taking the position of Head of Research Studies and Renewable Division, where such studies were carried out, noting the relevant work performed related to the National Energy and Climate Plan, the Hydrogen National Strategy, among others. She has devoted her life to science, promoting R&D for disruptive and new energy solutions to ensure clean, sustainable, and affordable energy solutions in the future. In this context, she has been working nationally and internationally, having ample experience in the area of scientific management and international cooperation. She was vice-chair of the R&D Coordination Committee (CERT) from 2005 to 2010 in the IEA. In the EU, she was involved in various groups and more recently, she was the Portuguese delegate at the Steering Committee of the Strategic Programme “SET-Plan, very actively involved in the activities, namely those regarding a Clean Energy Transition with a vision for carbon neutrality, and acted as an expert in H2020 Energy configuration. She was national contact point for IRENA, involved in the review of reports and evaluation of projects. In UNECE, she was a member of the group of experts for renewable energies (GERE). In May 1st 2021, she retired from public activities and continued her teaching at the level of higher studies, activity she never abandoned, taking a professorship at the Institute of Higher Education and Sciences (ISEC) in the domain of Bioenergy. Being a collaborator of CERENA, it is noted her work related to the coordination of the international project of industry-based biorefineries (Annex XI) of IEA Technological Cooperation Platform “IETS” (https://iea-industry.org/ ), within the scope of the National Group for Process Integration in IST (GNIP), being presently responsible for the implementation of a sub-task on Circular Bioeconomy and Biomass-oriented Industrial Symbiosis. She has more than 300 publications, with more than 3600 citations. She is co-author of a patent (suspended flow pyrolysis reactor for plastics), referee for scientific journals, namely for Elsevier (Energy and FUEL) and, in 2021, invited editor for “Advances in Hydrogen Energy Production and Storage” in: Energies, MDPI Open Access Journal. Areas of interest: Bioenergy; Thermochemical Conversion Processes; Hydrogen; CCUS; Strategy Design.