Julia Virgolino is a Ph.D. researcher at UCD School of Biosystems Engineering. She completed her Bachelor Degree in Environmental Engineering at the Federal University of Paraiba-Brazil as the top student of the class. During her undergraduate degree, she was awarded two times with research grants from the Institutional Scientific Initiation Scholarship Program, undertaking academic research in the areas of Hydraulic Sanitation and Solid Waste Engineering. In 2016, she worked as an intern at FUNETEC (Paraíba Foundation for Technological and Cultural Education), developing Municipal Sanitation Plans and environmental classification maps for the Rural Land Registry. Julia also spent 3 semesters of her bachelor’s at The University of Adelaide, in Australia, as part of a scholarship award.

Before joining UCD, she was a volunteer at the Institute for Education, Citizenship, and Culture of Sustainability (IECCUS), a non-profit organization focused on environmental education and social technologies. She worked in the construction of an Educational Reference Centre in Social Technologies applied to Sustainability, located in a Brazilian vulnerable community. She is highly motivated to work with LCA and Social LCA in addition to the holistic understanding of the bioeconomy and its implications for both environment and society.