ICREA Academia
Sebastià Puig Broch

Sebastià Puig Broch

ICREA Acadèmia 2019

Universitat de Girona · Engineering Sciences

Sebastià Puig Broch

I graduated in Chemistry at the Universitat de Girona (UdG) in 2002, where I also pursued PhD studies. Research work during my PhD involved scientific stays at TU Delft (The Netherlands) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ir. Mark C.M. van Loosdrecht. My academic career continued with two postdoctoral positions at TUDelft and Catalan Institute for Water Research in the period 2008-2010 thanks to a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship. In 2010, I came back to the UdG holding the position of Assistant Professor. In 2014, I received the award “Young talented researcher in Sustainable Water Management” from Fundación Botin (Spain). In 2019, I got the position of Associate Professor Serra Húnter at UdG. I have supervised 5 postdoctoral researchers and 7 doctoral theses (+6 ongoing). I am currently the UdG PI of 2 H2020 EU projects (BioRECO2VER; ELECTRA), one Swedish (ELECTROSYMBIOSIS) and 2 national projects (COOMET; WAFRA).


Research interests

Climate change and future depletion of resources are two of the most important environmental challenges that humankind have ever faced. My idea is to give a second chance to contaminated water and recalcitrant carbon dioxide (CO2) streams. My research interest for the following years are:

Water recovery as a need not a wish. Water and energy are essential interrelated resources for sustainable development, whose demands expected to increase in the next decades. The aim of this research line is to unveil bio-electrochemical chats between microorganisms for the bioremediation of polluted waters.

BioElectroCarbon recycling: from greenhouse gas to commodities.The goal of this research line is to develop a resilience and sustainability biorefinery concept based on electron-driven microbial reactions for the production of commodities (biofuels, building blocks) with renewable electricity and recalcitrant CO2 from industrial sources.


Keywords

bioelectroCO2 recycling, biofuels, electro bioremediation, environmental biotechnology, microbial electrosynthesis, water recovery