Loic Hilliou

L. Hilliou completed a PhD in 1996 at the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (France). He gained a large experience in the rheology and structure of complex fluids during the PhD, a 2 years post-doctoral stay at FORTH-IESL (Greece, now part of the European Soft Matter Infrastructure) and a fellowship from the EU-TMR Network FMRX-CT97-012. He then added a 3 years industrial experience as a post-doctoral fellow at TOTALFINAELF and later at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research where he developed consulting and technology transfer activities for BASF. In 2004 he settled in Portugal, joining the REQUIMTE Associate Laboratory to build a rheo-optical lab by securing national funding (FCT grant POCTI/EQU/58064/2004). He applied soft matter concepts to the study of polysaccharides obtained from Portuguese seaweeds (hybrid carrageenans) and of various food additives and systems. This new line of research resulted in the delivery of 2 invited talks, 1 invited review paper and 33 papers (out of a total of 120 publications, of which 99 in ISI indexed journals with h-index of 26 in WoS or 27 in Scopus) and the securing of a second national research grant (PTDC/CTM/100076/2008, out of a total of 6 as PI and 11 as team member and 2.3 M€ for the L. Hilliou's research institutes) where he lead a team of 9 members in 5 Portuguese and British Institutions. In 2008, he was hired as Associate Researcher (Ciência 2007 programme funded by FCT) to supervise the laboratory of rheology of the Institute of Polymers and Composites (IPC, I3N/MINHO Associate Laboratory), and to develop the in-line monitoring of polymer processes. Within this activity he secured a third FCT research grant (PTDC/AGR-ALI/122741/2010, leading a team of 13 scientists from 3 Portuguese research institutes) and participated in a European project (EcoBioCap) to study new biodegradable film packages for food. He also participated in 4 FCT funded projects (POCI/BIO/55789/2004; PTDC/CTM/099595/2008; PTDC/ECM/119179/2010; PTDC/CTM-POL/120843/2010) covering subjects such as cellulose based polymers, polyhydroxyalkanoates from mixed microbial cultures, polymer modified bitumen and polymers for photovoltaic cells. He gained international recognition through chairing sessions at international conferences (AERC2013, EPNOE2013, ESBP2013 and ICR2012), joining the scientific committees of POLYMAR2013, POLYMAR2018, EPNOE2013 and ESBP2015, joining the editorial board of Applied Rheology (up to 2019) and Materials, and the scientific board of the Erasmus Mundus Master Course EURHEO. His research career could be continued in 2014 with the award of a FCT Investigator grant (IF/00606/2014), which, over the 5 last years, permitted the production of 50 ISI indexed papers, 2 book chapters, the delivery of 4 invited talks and contributions to 2 keynote lectures in international workshops and conferences, the supervision of 2 post-docs (on a total of 3), 2 PhD (which is twice the average number of PhD supervised over the decade 2009-2019 by researchers of the Engineering school of the University of Minho, Portugal, where IPC is hosted, see statisitcs at https://www.eng.uminho.pt/pt/divulgacaoinstitucional/planoserelatorios/Paginas/relatoriosdeatividades.aspx, accessed in February 2021), 3 Master theses (on a total of 11), the participation in a European project (www. YPACK.eu) and in three national projects (02/SAICT/2017, grants 28157-Eprint and 29015-BioAdhePepGel and Sensible Car POCI-01-0247-FEDER-037902). Continuing his research on structure-rheology relationships in hydrogels, these new projects also triggered new research interests for developing slurries for eco-friendly printed lithium batteries and for new solder pastes for PCB applications. He also co-organized 2 workshops on rheology in 2017 and 2018, and lectured papers on soft matter and rheology topics for the Master of nanotechnology and materials engineering at the Mackenzie University (Brazil), where he was visiting scientist (CNPq grant 402248/2015-5) and published a book in 2020. He was invited as expert for the monitoring of 2 projects of the Executive Agency for Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (call 2019), for the evaluation of proposals submitted to the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (call 2020), to the COST program (2019- 2017), to the European Innovation Council (FET-Innovation Launchpad 2018), to the French National Research Agency (2016) and to the Graphene Flagship, FLAG-ERA Joint transnational Call 2015. In 2020, he was granted a 4th FCT project (total of 2 projects granted in 5 proposals to 5 FCT calls launched over the last 10 years with an average 14% success rate per call, as established in statistics available at https://www.fct.pt/estatisticas/projectos/index.phtml.en#vi).