Santiago Zapata-Boada was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1988. He completed his BSc in Chemical Engineering in 2013, MSc in Advanced Process Integration and Design in 2015, and PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2023, at the University of Manchester. Santiago has over eight years of work experience in the oil industry and consultancy services. He has worked as a flow assurance engineer (in charge of dehydration and corrosion control in oil production facilities), a process engineer (responsible for performance analysis and optimisation of refinery processes), and a consultant in energy optimisation and climate science. Currently, Santiago is conducting research at the University of Manchester focused on decarbonisation technologies for the energy industry, applying process design and simulation, techno-economic analysis, and life cycle assessment. Additionally, Santiago is the founder of Pungo Tech, a startup developing digital tools that combine first principles with artificial intelligence to improve the accuracy of corrosion rate predictions in the oil industry.