Sonia Maria Cabral de Menezes was for almost 46 years Senior Consultant in Analytical Chemistry with a specialty in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance applied to the Oil and Gas Industry of the Chemical Management of the Research and Development Center (CENPES) of PETROBRAS (1975 to February 2021) . As Chemistry is a matrix discipline, he worked on hundreds of research projects, of which he coordinated 17, always working on solutions in Chemistry for the Oil Industry, from Exploration to the qualification of products and bioproducts through Drilling, Production, Transport , Refining, Materials etc.
Sonia graduated in Chemical Engineering from the School of Chemistry at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in 1974 and obtained her Master's and Doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the Institute of Chemistry at UFRJ in 1978 and 2003 respectively. He specialized in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) at the City of London Polythecnic, London, UK, from 1978 to 1979
He was one of the twelve founding members of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Users Association (AUREMN) in 1988, after having installed the first new generation NMR equipment in the country in 1987 at CENPES. At AUREMN he was President for twelve years and is active in the Association to this day.
He was the Brazilian representative on the Commission: “Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy” of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) from 1991-2006.