Paraskevi Constantina Zoga
Paraskevi Konstantina Zoga is a PhD candidate in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Iowa. She holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, equivalent to a Master's degree. Her diploma thesis dealt with the combination of physicochemical methods for the recovery and purification of phenolic compounds from Olive Mill Wastewaters (OMW). Her main results were published in the Separation and Purification Technology (Kontos et al. 2018) and presented at the 11th Panhellenic National Scientific Chemical Engineering Congress, where she was awarded as the best poster presentation. During her undergrad studies had an industrial internship in the "Aluminium of Greece SA", where she was involved in Quality Control department trained on process management. After graduation, she pushed the frontiers beyond her country and conducted a three-month Erasmus+ traineeship as research assistant in Delft University of Technology. While there, she was involved in the development of a research proposal for the anaerobic treatment of urban wastewater.
In 2019 she was accepted in the graduate program of University of Iowa. Driven by her interest to solve real life problems and improve human life through chemical engineering, she joined Nuxoll Lab to carry out research on thermal mitigation of bacterial biofilms which infect medical implants. Her project is focused on heat treatment of biofilms grown in vivo. "Our group is pioneering in the field of thermal mitigation of bacterial biofilms, gaining valuable experience with in vitro experiments. My goal is to expand our experience with in vivo experiments and take the next step towards the development of a non-invasive treatment of those infections which affect millions of patients around the world."
