José Barbosa, PhD Student at LSRE-LCM/ALiCE, was awarded the Best Pitch Prize in the Water & Sustainability thematic area at the ALiCE Connect 2026 Ideas Competition, with the project DropEvo - A Point-of-Use Technology for Safe Drinking Water. The competition brought together PhD students across three thematic areas and challenged participants to develop and present innovative ideas in a concise and compelling format. This experience provided an opportunity to strengthen and demonstrate key skills in innovation, creativity, scientific communication and the effective presentation of new concepts. We look forward to following the future development of DropEvo and wish José Barbosa every success in the next stages of his academic and professional journey.

Ana Marta Brito, a project researcher at LSRE-LCM, received the 2nd place for Best Poster Award at the PFiC 2026 | PACKAGING OF THE FUTURE® International Conference for her work entitled "CFD Analysis of Heat Transfer in Glass Melting Furnaces Fuelled by Methane and Hydrogen". 

The work was developed under the supervision of Dr. Yaidelin Marinque, Dr. Ricardo Santos, and Dr. Isabel Barbosa, and contributes to the ongoing research into more sustainable industrial processes, in line with the EU’s climate-neutrality target by 2050. This research was carried out within the scope of the project “Embalagem do Futuro | + ECOLÓGICA + DIGITAL + INCLUSIVA” (C644931699-00000042, Investment Project No. 59), funded by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

This distinction recognizes the quality and impact of the research developed at LSRE-LCM.

Congratulations to Marta on this achievement!"