Direction

Research keywords: ferroelectric materials, Piezoresponse Force Microscopy, flexible electronics, materials for multisource energy harvesting. 

Image

He received his PhD degree in Physics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 1994. After a short postdoctoral stay at the Centre d’Elaboration et des Études Estructurales de Materiaux, CEMES-CNRS (Toulouse. France) in 1995, he joined the Nanotechnology Group of Cranfield University (United Kingdom) as research officer (1996–1998). Later he obtained a postdoctoral fellowship (1998–1999) at the Univ. du Maine-Le Mans (France). In 1999 he joined the Materials Science Institute of Madrid (CSIC) and became Tenured Scientist in 2007.  
He has been deputy director of the Materials Science Institute (2009-2012) and deputy Vice President for Internationalization of CSIC (2012-2014). At present, he is part of the Management Committee of the Spanish Technological Platform on Advanced Materials and Nanomaterials (MATERPLAT). Since 2011 he is the Director of the CSIC Postgraduate course “Fronteras en Ciencia de Materiales”. 

His research interests include the quantitative microstructural analysis of ferroelectric polycrystalline materials with X Ray Diffraction, electron and scanning force microscopies. He is the responsible of the Piezoresponse Force Microscopy lab at ICMM-CSIC. With his work, he has contributed to the understanding of grain size effects on the properties of polycrystalline ferroelectrics and to the development of advanced quantitative texture analysis of ferroelectric films and bulk ceramics. He is currently working on low temperature films for flexible electronics and on materials for multisource energy harvesting.

Research keywords: hybrid and biohybrid materials, clay-based functional materials, bionanocomposites, carbon-clay nanocomposites, sepiolite based nanoarchitectures, waste removal.

Image

She got a FPI predoctoral fellowship to carry out her Ph.D. at the Materials Science Institute of Madrid (CSIC), obtaining in 1991 her Diploma from the Complutense University of Madrid. She made short stages at the École National Superieur de Chimie de Montpellier (France) in 1990 and at the University of Aberdeen (UK) in 1991. She was postdoctoral Fellow at the Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO (USA) from 1992-1994. In 1994, she joined the Carlos III University in Madrid as Assistant Professor (1994–1997) until she moved to the ICMM-CSIC after obtained a Tenured Scientist position.

Since 2018 she leader the “Nanostructured Hybrid, Biohybrid and Porous Materials” Group, working on chemistry of materials to produce advanced organic-inorganic hybrids & biohybrid materials using natural resources such as clays and biomass. She has been recognized for her research with an Accesit to the 1993 W. F. Bradley Award granted by AIPEA, and 3 times by the CSIC in its Annual Ceremony to Honor its Research Personnel (2007, 2009 & 2017) for her participation in various international awarded scientific contributions (e.g. Award of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba in Biomedical Sciences 2016).

She is currently Vice-President of the Spanish Clays Society (SEA) and its Liaison at the COSCE & Councilor of the Clay Minerals Society. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Recent Patents on Nanotechnology, Associate Editor of Applied Clay Sciences and Advisory Editor of Clay Science. She has been very active in the organization of numerous events, acting as Vice-chair of the 5th Materials Discussion of the RSC, General Secretary of the 2010 Trilateral Meeting on Clay Minerals sponsored by the American, Japanese and Spanish Clay Societies, and currently chair the organization of the first Clay Meeting of the AIPEA to be held in Madrid in 2027.