Dr Chaitra Venkatesh has a bachelor’s degree (B.Eng) in Industrial and Production Engineering from Visvesvaraiah Technological University, India, and a PhD in Polymer Engineering from the  Technological University of Shannon – Midlands for the development of biodegradable drug-eluting nanocomposite for coronary stents. She is now a Postdoctoral Researcher in TUS working on EU projects: CurCol and BioICEP. Curcol is an EU Interreg project which aims to develop a sustainable method of extracting curcumin for colour production and incorporating it into biopolymers as a bio-colourant. BioICEP is a Horizon 2020 project to create sustainable routes to a circular economy by transforming plastic waste streams to high market demand biopolymers.