Elza Bontempi
Elza Bontempi has a permanent position at the University of Brescia where she is currently a full Professor teaching courses in Fundamentals of Chemistry for the Technologies. She is in charge of the research line concerning eco-materials. She has been responsible for several national and international research projects developing new technologies and new sustainable materials coming from waste and by-products. In recent years, her scientific activity has focused on the recovery of critical raw materials in the field of circular economy, such as lithium and cobalt, from spent batteries. She is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and 8 patents in the field of material recovery.
She is included in the list or Unstoppable Women and the top Italian Scientists (nttps://topitallanscientists.ora) in natural and environmental sciences (https://elza-bontempi.unibs.it). She is ranked among the World top 2% outstanding scientists (lists of researchers prepared by Elsevier bV. Stantord University, USA). She received numerous awards for her groundbreaking research, as the Women Excellence prize from Il Sole 24 ORE and Financial Times. In 2024 she won the “Intellectual Property Award”, a prize of the Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy, for the new technology concerning strategic metals recovery. In 2025 she contributed to the AIRI (Italian Association for Industrial Research) report “Innovations of the Next Future” about ENVIRONMENT AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY, which provides an updated picture of high socio-economic impact technologies that will contribute in the short to medium term to innovation in the main national industrial sectors.
She is currently the principal investigator of the CARAMEL FISA project, financed by MUR (https://caramel.unibs.it/) to develop the new patented technology for lithium-ion battery recycle.
