Dr Livia Ribeiro de Souza

Livia was awarded a Science without Borders scholarship to develop her PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Abir Al-Tabbaa. Her research looked at microfluidics to produce microcapsules for self-healing in cementitious materials. This research was also supported by the Materials for Life (M4L) project funded by EPSRC in 2013, looking at biomimetic multi-scale damage immunity for construction materials. Currently, Livia's work as a research assistant focuses on using microfluidics to investigate the microencapsulation of different liquid healing agents. Based on this, she also explores the synergy between core and shell materials to promote self-healing, mainly focusing on chemical and physical triggering. Her work is within the Resilient Materials 4 Life (RM4L), a project aiming at creating materials that will adapt to their environment, develop immunity to harmful actions, self-diagnose the on-set of deterioration and self-heal when damaged. Before Cambridge, Livia obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry (UFMG, Brazil) and an M.Sc. in Mineral Science and Technology (CDTN, Brazil). Her B.Sc. dissertation involved the synthesis and characterization of carbon nanofibers supported in CaO. This work took place in the laboratory of Catalysis & Environmental Chemistry and her thesis was awarded the maximum score of 100/100. During the M.Sc., Livia investigated the metal contamination in river and lake sediments nearby a former uranium mine affected by acid mine drainage. With the support of INCT-Acqua, she visited the Department of Catchment Hydrology (UFZ-Halle, Germany) to perform sulphur isotopic analyses of the sediments.