Luisa Martins

Luísa Margarida Martins is Full Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department (DEQ) of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
She serves as Vice President for Scientific Affairs of DEQ and coordinator of DEQ’s scientific area Synthesis, Molecular Structure, and Chemical Analysis. Coordinates the Chemistry PhD program and is co-founder of the Catalysis and Sustainability PhD program.

Since 1992 Luísa conducts her research at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE), IST. Co-coordinates the Inorganic and Organometallic Architectures, Reactivity and Catalysis (IOARC) research group and was (2018-23) coordinator of CQE thematic line Synthesis, Catalysis and Reactivity and member of CQE Coordination Commission of the Scientific Council.

A three words definition of Luísa’s research motivation is: sustainable-by-design catalytic processes. Luísa's research focuses on the application of green chemistry principles to provide improved (cost-effective, energy-efficient, sustainable, and scalable) catalytic processes for the synthesis of large-scale commodities (e.g., acetic and adipic acids), the fixation of carbon dioxide (e.g., into methanol or carbonates), and biomass valorisation (e.g., into biopolymers or sugar-acids).
Luísa is team leader in designing sustainable homogeneous and/or single-site heterogenous catalysts and combine them with unconventional synthetic strategies and computational studies. Her preferred catalysts are the C-scorpionate complexes. She is also very keen of molecular electrochemistry and electrocatalysis.
She is a highly cited researcher, recognised by Stanford University (since 2019), maintaining (2019-2023) her position in the top 2% in her field. Luisa's international recognition is also reflected by her strong network of collaborations (over 40 academic/scientific institutions). In 2022 was nominated expert in Science Literacy Capacity Building for the Female Sci-Tech Talent Capacity Building Centre. also in 2022, Luísa was awarded the Scientific Prize University of Lisbon / CGD Bank (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering areas). In 2021 and 2020 Luísa was awarded Honorary Distinctions for the Areas of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at the 2020 and 2019 (respectively) editions of the Scientific Prize University of Lisbon / CGD Bank. In 2017 Luísa has been awarded the Scientific Excellence Prize IPL-CGD for the Areas of Technology and Engineering (in recognition of her scientific productivity and impact along the last three years).
She is FRSC, member of ACS and ISE, and the former President of the Portuguese Electrochemical Society (SPE).
Since 2023 Luísa is the Vice President of the Portuguese Chemical Society (SPQ).