This Sunday, June 5th, Alcântara Water Factory hosted the ceremony Prémios Verdes VISÃO + Grupo Águas de Portugal. The day that the World Environment Day was celebrated was also intended to reward people, companies and organizations that stood out in this area, in Portugal. There were about 150 applications for a total of 10 categories to be tendered, in an initiative that had the High Sponsorship of the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
In the Personality category, one of those distinguished was Nuno Maulide, who has a degree in Chemistry at Técnico and is currently a visiting professor at the Departamento de Engenharia Química (DEQ). He is Professor of Organic Synthesis at the University of Vienna, where he also directs the Institute of Organic Chemistry. In 2019, at the age of 39, he was elected scientist of the year in Austria and in 2018 he was the winner of the Ignaz Lieben prize, awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Last year, he launched the Portuguese edition of his chemistry book “How does air become bread?”. During the ceremony, he underlined the special pleasure of receiving the first prize in his home country. The distinction was awarded ex aequo with Luísa Schmidt, professor and principal researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL).
In the Research category, the COVIDetect project, a consortium between Universidade de Lisboa, and Grupo Águas de Portugal was distinguished. COVIDetect was launched in April 2020 and funded through the Compete programme by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Ricardo Santos and Sílvia Monteiro are the researchers of the Analysis Laboratory of Instituto Superior Técnico (LAIST) and coordinate the participation of Técnico in the project, which aims to monitor water in Estações de Tratamento de Águas Residuais (ETAR) and detect variations in viral load of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in urban waters, through evidence of fecal excretion. Monitoring sewage networks close to places with the highest population density and close to referral hospitals makes it possible to know the profile of contamination of water with genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 and to establish its relationship with the number of infected.
“From the beginning, the project presented a number of challenges and we had to overcome great technical and logistical difficulties” at a time when the work was taking place in the middle of a pandemic situation. Overcoming these challenges by all those who are part of the project “to be recognized and rewarded is very gratifying,” sais Ricardo Santos. Sílvia Monteiro shares the same opinion and says that it is very good to “verify that there is an appreciation for all the work developed” after being “about a year implementing this entire network for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 and that will also allow researching any other virus or bacteria.”
“Improving water quality globally” while maintaining the effort that has been developed is one of the objectives to maintain, according to Ricardo Santos. Covid-19 has rightly proven that we are all interconnected and “help support decision-making and support the development of new treatments “so that in general the health of the planet and people” can improve even more.
The project that started from an initiative of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Action is coordinated by Águas de Portugal and is a strong contribution to improve the country’s response preparedness capacity in the face of new outbreak situations, benefiting the entire society at national level and, in the field of research, at national and international level.
