João Frias

João Frias has completed a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering (2002/2006); a master's degree in Ecological Engineering (2006/2010), and a PhD in Environmental Studies (2011/2015), focused on marine litter, microplastics and ecotoxicology. Both the bachelor and the master's degree were conducted at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT-UNL). During the master's degree, João enrolled for one semester in the Transboundary Water Management Master at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands, as part of the Erasmus program. The PhD degree was conducted mainly in FCT-UNL, with biochemical biomarkers and histology training at Plymouth University, United Kingdom. João's research focuses on marine litter and microplastics, and he has been working on this topic for 10 years. He has worked on projects such as POIZON, Azorlit, BASEMAN and IMP.act and is currently collaborating on the JPI Oceans MicroplastiX project, which is aiming to understand degradation and fragmentation of plastics under marine conditions. João is the co-founder of the Portuguese Marine Litter Association (APLM), a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that is liaising with the creation of the Portuguese Partnership on Marine Litter, as part of the vision signed at the Honolulu Declaration in 2011, and the 2012 United Nations Manila Declaration. He is involved in many volunteering activities regarding STEM and marine litter outreach, awareness and beach and/or river cleanups and develops extra-curricular activities in theatre performance.