Vanda Branco, MSc

Merck

My name is Vanda Branco and I am currently working as Key Account Manager at Merck, in Belgium.

I graduated from IST in 2012 after doing my master thesis at Avecom, Ghent (BE). My research was focused on enhancing methane production on biogas reactors by developing and testing new additives. At the same time, I was helping on the environment consulting projects. This resulted on the invitation to join the company as a project engineer. I was mainly working for the soil and groundwater remediation business unit and oversaw the production of commercial bacterial cultures, QA/QC, the European subsidized projects. I had also the honor to collaborate with P&G on microbial surface treatment which resulted in a patent.

In 2018 I started working for Air Products, an international industrial gas company, as food and cryogenic specialist within BeNeGe. I was providing commercial technology support, managing, and implementing industrial offerings mainly in the food industry, but also in chemical and pharmaceutical sector. The main applications I was involved with comprised food freezing and chilling, water treatments and cryo-grinding. Since I was enjoying much more the commercial role than the technical side of my daily work (analytical sizing, P&IDs, heat transfer calculations, industrial machinery installation) I joined Merck Life Science in January 2022, where I’m responsible for the biggest academical and governmental institutions in Flanders, Belgium.