Arantzazu Santamaria
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Biography
Arantzazu Santamaria Echart completed a BSc in Industrial Technical Engineering, specialized in Industrial Chemistry in 2011 (best academic record award, 2010/2011) and a MSc on Renewable Materials Engineering in 2012, both at the Faculty of Engineering, Gipuzkoa at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). In 2017, she obtained her PhD (Cum Laude, International mention and, UPV/EHU extraordinary award) in the Renewable Materials Engineering Program at the ‘Materials + Technologies’ Group (GMT, UPV/EHU), through a grant awarded by the UPV/EHU (PIF/UPV/12/201). After a year of Postdoctoral work in the same Group, in 2018 she has moved to Madrid, at “Center for Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology” (CQAB), center associated to the University of Alcalá (UAH) as New Materials area supervisor. This center is dedicated to support entities and, principally private companies, to develop products, processes and scale up actions. In 2020 she moved to the “Mountains Research Center – Polytechnic Institute of Bragança” (CIMO – IPB) in Portugal, where she enrolled for 3.5 years as a Junior researcher and 2.5 years with a “Tenure Track position” as an Assistant researcher. In 2026 she joined the GMT group as a Ramon y Cajal researcher.
Research
Her research is focused on developing green and sustainable strategies to design new materials (i.e., natural polymer-based systems, polyurethanes and derivatives) applied in the health and food areas and other industrial applications. To this, she has experience in the development of aqueous systems (emulsions, dispersions), particulates and films, particularly applying advanced processing technologies (electrospinning and 3D printing).