Héléna Verbeeck is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sustainable Materials Science group at Ghent University (UGent). She obtained her PhD in Materials Engineering from KU Leuven in December 2025, where she developed a multiscale modeling framework combining phase-field modeling with Molecular Dynamics to study the recovery of platinum group metals from spent automotive catalysts during pyrometallurgical smelting. Her current research focuses on the use of Molecular Dynamics simulations to determine slag properties in high-temperature processes.