Dr Claudio Fonte is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the study of the flow and mixing dynamics in industrial equipment to provide innovative solutions that address new manufacturing demands. He uses a combination of experimental and computational techniques for the fundamental understanding of physical processes and for the development of computational tools for the in-silico design of new products and equipment. Specific topics of interest include:

• Flow and mixing of highly viscous and complex rheology fluids
• Microfluidics
• Mixing in stirred equipment
• Single-phase and multiphase flow in porous media

Dr Claudio Fonte obtained his PhD degree in 2012 from the University of Porto, Portugal on the topic of mixing by Confined Impinging Jets (CIJs) for the production of plastic parts by Reaction Injection Moulding. His work focused on the fundamental study of the flow and mixing dynamics in laminar chaotic flows using both Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations (CFD) and laser flow characterisation techniques (Particle Image Velocimetry, PIV; Laser-Induced Fluorescence, PLIF). He was awarded the EFCE Young Researcher Award in Mixing 2015 by the European Federation of Chemical Engineers and its Working Party on Mixing for the innovation, breadth and depth of his research on impinging jets mixing and the dissemination of the results.

From 2013 to 2014 he was a postdoctoral researcher at IFPEN (France), a major research and training centre in the fields of energy, transport and the environment. There, he developed numerical models of the flow and mass transfer of multiphase pilot-scale stirred reactors using Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Before joining the University of Manchester he was a research engineer at IFPEN in the department responsible for the intensification of pilot-scale equipment. During this period, he developed innovative methodologies based on the combination of computational tools and 3D metal printing techniques for the rational design and manufacture of intensified pilot-scale chemical reactors.