Williane Freitas

Postdoctoral Researcher

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Williane Freitas is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the MaDE@UTV research group at the Department of Chemical Science and Technologies of the University of Rome Tor Vergata (UTV) since February 2022. She received her Degree in Chemistry at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil) and her Master’s Degree in Engineering and Materials Sciences at the Federal University of Ceará (Brazil). She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences at UTV, focusing her research on developing Platinum Group Metal-free Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Electrochemical Devices.

She was awarded the 2022 “Fondazione Oronzio and Niccolò De Nora” Doctoral Prize by the Executive Board of the Division of Electrochemistry of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI). During her PhD, she received multiple recognitions for her research on oxygen reduction reaction catalysts, including the Best Oral Presentation award at the Italian Virtual Workshop on Fuel Cells (2021), and Best Poster awards (ACS Energy & Fuels) at the 29th Topical Meeting – Energy & Water: Electrochemistry in Securing Sustainable Society Development of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), Mikulov, Czech Republic (2021), as well as at the 2nd Congress of the Interdivisional Group on Chemistry for Renewable Energy (ENERCHEM2) of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI), Padova, Italy (2020). In 2024, she was also honored with the Best Oral Presentation award at the X National Workshop of the Italian Association of Chemistry for Engineering (AICIng), Perugia, Italy, for her work on advanced materials in oxygen electrocatalysis.

Williane Freitas’s research interests relate to the electrochemistry of energy conversion and storage devices, including oxygen electrocatalysis, structure and transport properties in polymer electrolytes, bioelectrochemistry, and the electrochemical behavior of redox couples for redox flow batteries (RFBs). Her work is particularly focused on the synthesis of noble metal-free electrocatalysts such as hierarchical porous carbon structures, functional spinel oxides, and alloys, the characterization of their bulk and surface properties, and their application for key electrochemical reactions. These include the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), microbial fuel cells (MFCs), and zinc–air batteries (ZABs), as well as the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs). She has actively collaborated with several research institutes and academic institutions, including Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Milano-Bicocca, and CNR ITAE in Messina (Italy), the Institute of Carboquímica in Zaragoza (Spain), Chongqing University, Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an (China), and the University of California Irvine (USA). She is the author and co-author of > 15 research papers in peer-reviewed international scientific journals and 1 book chapter (Scopus ID: 57218542383). Williane is currently involved in the following research projects: the PNRR initiative, the MOST Cascade Call – ELECTRIC project, PRIN2022 – ALEF, and the MAECI “Progetti di Grande Rilevanza” – HAMLET.

Publications

ORCID

Scopus