Valentina Balloi obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees inChemistry from the University of Cagliari (Italy). During her studies,Valentina carried out two internships at the industrial chemistry and catalysis department of this University. She worked on the development of mesoporous solids for sustainable applications, such as silicas for carbon dioxide absorption, and catalysts for the preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. In the second year of her master’s degree she got an Erasmus scholarship and worked for six months at the "Instituto de Ciencias de Materiales" (CSIC) in Seville. During this internship, Valentina developed photocatalysts based on metal oxides for the degradation of organic pollutantin water.  After completing her studies in 2015, Valentinaworked at Twente University (NL) with a pre doc contract in the Membrane Scienceand Technology group. She worked on the project “Sustainable and Advanced MembranesBy Aqueous Phase Separation” which objective is the development of a newsolvent-free method to fabricate polymeric flat sheet and hollow fibermembranes for water purification.  In January 2017 she moved to Spain and shestarted working at Andaltec, the technological center of plastic materials in Andalucía, at the R&D department, where she took part in the development of nationaland European funded projects. Her role was finding suitable collaboration with companies, Universities and other research centers, building consortium and writing proposals for local, national and international funding programmes.  In September 2018 she accepted a position asR&D manager at Petronics Tecnología (Spain), a company that develops its activity in the fields of electronics and information technologies. Valentina was in charge of the organization of the R&D activity and projects, in close collaboration with the electronics and informatics departments. Her tasks also included the management of the bureaucracy for the obtention of tax incentives for the R&D activity of the company. She worked at Petronics until March2020.  In September 2020 Valentina obtained a pre doc contract at the engineering department of Loyola University (Spain), and she currently works there. Her research focuses on the non-enzymatic synthesis of carbohydrates from formaldehyde, known as the Formose Reaction, and she also has some teaching tasks: she gives lessons in laboratory of Chemistry to the first-year engineering students.