Martim Costa is ESR 4, responsible for the development of Microfluidic Methods for micro and nanoplastic detection. At this moment, he is enrolled as a PhD student in KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and undertaking his research endeavours at SciLifeLab.
In terms of previous education, he completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biomedical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, with a specialization in Regenerative Medicine and Micro/Nanotechnologies, which eventually evolved into a master thesis project pertaining to the development of a heating system for point-of-care applications in a biomedical context at INESCMN in Lisbon, Portugal. Upon its conclusion in 2020, Martim sought to continue his scientific path in applying microfluidic and microfabrication science to the current challenges facing society, finding therefore an unprecedented opportunity in the field of environmental science, specifically in the form of microplastic research and sample preparation under the MONPLAS consortium. The pragmatic usefulness of engineering projects is of extreme importance to this ESR, and, allying interest to applicability, it was a self-evident truth that human health and environment are interconnected and must therefore be improved in tandem with each other.
During this project, as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher, Martim hopes to give new technological answers to the microfluidic preparation of microplastic samples and improve his leadership, public speaking and systems engineering skills.