Virginia Venezia is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering (DICMaPI), University of Naples Federico II (UNINA). She received her BSc and MSc degrees in Chemical Engineering from UNINA in 2016 and 2019, respectively, and completed her PhD in Industrial Products and Process Engineering in 2023, with research focusing on the development of multifunctional hybrid materials through innovative biowaste valorization strategies, within a “waste-to-wealth” framework. She has designed tailored synthetic approaches to convert humic substances and other underexploited biowaste derivatives into advanced materials for environmental, biomedical, and sustainable packaging applications, demonstrating how the integration of chemistry, materials science, and processing technologies can transform waste streams into high-value functional materials.
Dr. Venezia has developed strong expertise in electrohydrodynamic processing techniques, particularly electrospinning, during a six-month research stay at CSIC-IATA (Valencia, Spain), where she focused on the developmwnt of electrospun fibers based on humic substances and hybrid nanostructured materials for active and sustainable packaging.
In her current postdoctoral research, she specializes in electrospinning technologies for the development of biobased materials for metal recovery, including the adsorption of precious and critical metals from e-waste leachate solutions and the removal of heavy metals from wastewater.
Her research output includes 36 publications in high-impact, peer-reviewed international journals. She has actively disseminated her work through 24 oral presentations, including five invited as invited speaker. Her research has been recognized through several prestigious awards, most notably the Eni Award 2025 – Young Researcher of the Year, conferred by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella. She has also received several prestigious PhD thesis awards, including the Guido Barone Prize from the Italian Chemical Society (SCI), the Cinzia Chiappe Award 2024 from the SCI Green Chemistry–Sustainable Chemistry Group, and the ISGS PhD Thesis Award 2023 from the International Sol-Gel Society.
Dr. Venezia is an active member of several scientific societies, including the Italian Chemical Society (SCI), the International Sol-Gel Society (ISGS) and its Early-Career Researcher Network, and the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering (AIDIC).
