Can structural changes lead to dematerialization? Lessons from the Portuguese socioeconomic metabolism between 1995 and 2017

defended my Ph.D. thesis for the MIT Portugal Ph.D. in Sustainable Energy Systems from IST in Portugal. The goal of the Ph.D. was to provide a better understanding of the relationship between economic development and the use of natural resources. The work focused on studying the material and economic flows that make up the socioeconomic metabolism of a country. During the Ph.D. I spent four months at IndEcol at NTNU in Norway. I was a board member of the International Society of Industrial Ecology (ISIE) student chapter. Between 2016 and 2018, I was a member of the IST team working on the Sharing Cities Project. The Sharing Cities project was a European project shared by six different countries focusing on smart cities. My background was mechanical engineering, having completed the Integrated Master in Mechanical Engineering at IST in Lisbon. My master thesis focused on building energy simulation and was attributed top marks. energy management platforms, business models, and evaluation of deployed solutions. Also contributed to the work packages related to implementing other initiatives and linked with the citizen, including the development of an urban digital social market. The project joined professionals from 34 government, industry, and academia partners in 6 different European cities, creating a network of people interested in actively contributing to more sustainable cities. Invited to teach a theoretical and an exercise class regarding building energy simulation to 4 th -year Architecture students of the course Environmental Design, following the work developed in the master thesis. of The focused on environment, sustainability, energy resources, energy systems economics and modeling, optimization of energy systems, energy in buildings, economics, project evaluation and externalities, and entrepreneurship and The work produced aims to understand the relationship between material use and economic development. This was achieved by creating a program in Python to track material flows across an economy based on freely accessible data, Input-Output Analysis, and the principle of material balance. The results show how a country’s material use has evolved through the years and relates to other and its economic This one-week workshop organized by MIT and MIT Portugal focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, from identifying a market need to design thinking and business models.