Eider Berganza wins the 3rd Emerging Research Prize in Magnetism

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Eider Berganza, a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Madrid Institute of Materials Science (ICMM-CSIC), has been recognized by the Spanish Magnetism Club with the 3rd Emerging Research in Magnetism Award. The aim of this award is "to recognize the outstanding work in Magnetism of Spanish scientists and technologists, or foreign scientists and technologists working in Spain, who are in a promising stage of their career development," explains the association.

The jury for this call highlighted Berganza's "career in the field of multifunctional nano- and microstructures, encompassing different disciplines." Specifically, the jury highly valued her future potential, "demonstrating remarkable scientific independence and leadership skills, as evidenced by her securing postdoctoral grants and contracts in prestigious calls, her participation as principal investigator in competitively funded projects, her leadership in publications as first author, and her mentoring activities in training new researchers," the decision states.

Berganza is part of the Nanomagnetism Group at ICMM-CSIC, where she completed her doctoral thesis studying magnetic domains in nanostructures using Atomic Force Microscopy aided by micromagnetic simulations. After this work, which she carried out under the supervision of Agustina Asenjo and Miriam Jaafar, Berganza joined the automotive industry in Stuttgart, Germany.

In 2019, she received an Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) scholarship and joined Michael Hirtz's group at the Institute of Nanotechnology (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT, Germany), where she began working on nanofabrication and the study of biologically active surfaces using scanning probe lithography techniques, specifically Dip-Pen nanolithography and fluid force microscopy.

Back in 2021, the researcher participated in the Young Researchers Group Preparation Program, a two-year program with a success rate of less than 10% awarded by KIT, which prepared her for a Junior Chair to develop a new line of research on 3D nanostructure lithography. A year later, she obtained a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship and returned to ICMM, where she works on lithographed nanostructures with magnetic properties.