Natalia Castejón - A young scientist to watch

 The AOCS Journals Young Scientist to Watch initiative is directed at scientists in the early stages of their career (younger than 36 years old or have earned their highest degree within the last 10 years) who are conducting transformative research in the area of fats, oils, oilseed proteins, and related materials. The recognition is given to feature scientists whose research “has significantly advanced scientific understanding within their discipline or holds substantial promise for such an impact in the near future.” Featured scientists publish their work in AOCS Journals.

We are delighted to announce that Natalia Castejón, University of Pau and the Adour Region, has joined this esteemed list. 

Natalia Castejón holds a Ph.D. in Food Chemistry from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2018). Her PhD thesis primarily focused on the extraction and enzymatic modification of omega-3 oils from novel plants and microalgae using green techniques and environmentally friendly solvents. Afterwards, she worked for one year as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Iceland (2019), where her research dealt with the development of eco-friendly methods to produce natural extracts from seaweeds to be used in cosmetics products.

Currently, she is doing a postdoctoral stay at the University of Pau and the Adour Region (Anglet, France). Her research aims to develop alternative greener and efficient extraction approaches for obtaining bioactive molecules and biomacromolecules from red seaweed. She is co-author of nine scientific articles in SCI international journals, a patent and numerous contributions to international scientific symposiums. In 2020, she was awarded the H.P. Kaufmann Award granted by the German Society for Fat Science (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fettwissenschaft, DGF). Recently, she has received a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship (2021-2024) from the REinforcing Women In Research (REWIRE) Programme, a Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions co-funded by the University of Vienna and the European Commission.

Her paper on Integrated Green and Enzymatic Process to Produce Omega‐3 Acylglycerols from Echium plantagineum Using Immobilized Lipases is published in the Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society (JAOCS)

Congratulations Dr. Castejón!