Valeria Grazú, selected to participate in the European Innovation Council’s EIC WOMEN mentoring programme
The researcher of the Aragon Nanoscience and Materials Institute (INMA), a joint institute of CSIC and the University of Zaragoza, Valeria Grazú, has been selected by the European Innovation Council (EIC) to participate in the EIC WOMEN Leadership programme, which is a programme that seeks to provide female role models and innovative business leaders across the spectrum of innovation, technology and business. For 6 months Grazú and the rest of the other 83 selected women scientists and entrepreneurs will receive mentoring and training to improve their leadership, networking and technology transfer skills.
Valeria Grazú has been selected thanks to the FET-OPEN HOTZYMES project she coordinates, which is funded by the European Innovation Council and aims to achieve the enzymatic production of chemical compounds. As Valeria Grazú says, “the enzymatic production of chemical compounds allows more efficient industrial production processes to be obtained with lower energy consumption than those obtained through chemical synthesis. The incorporation of several biocatalytic steps in cascade reactions in a single reactor offers a clear benefit in terms of time, resource and yield efficiency, as well as reducing the number of processing steps. The HOTZYMES H2020 FETOPEN project is working on an innovative concept to overcome one of the main problems of biocatalytic cascade reactions, the fact that each of the enzymes has specific environmental requirements (e.g. optimal reaction temperature).
By coupling enzymes with magnetic nanoparticles, the temperature conditions can be adjusted locally and thus create the optimal environment for each enzyme participating in the cascade reaction. The application of an alternating magnetic field (AMF) in the bioreactor allows the local heating process to be controlled remotely.
The European Innovation Council is Horizon Europe’s one-stop shop for all types of innovators, from individuals to organisations, research institutes, universities or companies. Together with other parts of Horizon Europe, it stimulates all forms of innovation, from incremental to breakthrough and disruptive innovation, with a focus on market-creating innovation.
The launch of the EIC WOMEN Leadership programme (2nd cohort), for which registration is currently open, will take place on 20 May from 10:00 to 11:30 in online mode.
19/05/2022
