Professor Pedro Fardim

Pedro Fardim is affiliated to KU Leuven in Belgium where he holds a professorship in Chemical Engineering for Health & Care at the Faculty of Engineering Science, Department of Chemical Engineering, CREAS Division. He is also the President of the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence (EPNOE) Association.  He obtained his Doctor of Science in chemistry at State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil and his Habilitation in Chemical Engineering at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. During 2005-2019 he was Head of the Laboratory fo Fibre and Cellulose Technology and Professor in Biomass Engineering at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the International Academy of Wood Science and a member of the American Chemical Society. His research interest lies in topochemical engineering, a way to understand and mimic the bioassembly present in natural materials to create sustainable technologies for process and product design. His research is inspired on systems such as trees, plants and different microorganisms. He teaches sustainable chemical engineering for new materials and chemicals, biochemical process engineering and chemical engineering for human health.  Biofabrication is his passion and he is inspired about patterns and functions of bioshapes in nature. He aims to reproduce the natural biofabrication using water as medium and biological polymers and inorganics as components. Topochemical engineering or the science to build three dimensional architectures using a combination of directed assembly and disassembly is his tool. The skilful combination of natural molecules or hybridisation of biological polymers with small synthetic segments are used to direct the assembling process. The new processes and materials can be used in pharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine, diagnostics, packaging, cosmetics and materials for energy.