We deeply regret the death of our former group member, collaborator and student, Luis Amaral.

Luís Amaral would turn 42 in September. In 2007, he concluded his master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering with the thesis “Sintering studies of nonstoichiometric strontium titanate ceramics” and received his PhD in 2012, with the work entitled  “Microstructural design of titanate-based electroceramics”, both at the University of Aveiro and within the R&D activities of the Electroceramics Group.

Luís worked at the companies Teka (2004) and Rauschert (2005). From March to July 2010 he attended the COHITEC program “Development of a Business Plan with real technologies of high growth potential”, at COTEC and Porto Business School.

He started his research activity at CICECO, in 2005, where he stayed until 2012. During that period, 2009-2011, he was also a visiting scientist at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.

He was currently a researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico and associated with the Materials Electrochemistry R&D Group with which he collaborated since 2012. His current research was on the evolution of electrolytic hydrogen in an alkaline environment.

From 2015 to 2018 he was Deputy Director of the journal of the Portuguese Materials Society (SPM) edited by Elsevier.

Despite his short career, he was an excellent researcher with a recognized contribution do the community based on the high-quality standards of his scientific publications.

On behalf of all of us we pay a tribute to Luís Amaral.