Design of Advanced Photocatalytic Materials for Energy and Environmental Applications

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her doctoral research was conducted at the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry (CSIC), spending short periods as a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Later on, she spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Catalysis Engineering Group at Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), and in 2009 she started working in the Renewable Energies Division of the Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology Studies (CIEMAT) as a "Juan de la Cierva" and "Ramón y Cajal" researcher. Her research interests have been mainly related to photocatalytic processes, with special focus on obtaining improved photocatalysts for environmental applications. Along her career she has approach topics such as the synthesis of TiO2-based nanostructures, the removal of pollutants, selective photo-oxidation reactions, indoor air treatment, or NOx abatement, among others. She has participated in 12 projects, among which she was the principal investigator of one of them, and has being involved in different educational and supervision tasks. Currently, she is co-authored of 28 articles in SCI journals of high impact index, accumulating more than 700 citations. Besides, her work has given rise to more than 40 contributions to national and international conferences (20 as presenting author).

Raquel Portela conducted her doctoral studies at the Energy, Environment and Technology Research Centre (Ciemat), Spain, making short stays in the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Humbold-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and received her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in 2008. She was a three-month visiting scholar in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), USA, and the Institut of Environmental and Catalytic Research of Lyon (IRCELYON), France, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Ciemat. In 2011 she was awarded a three-year "Juan de la Cierva" mobility grant to work in her actual position, the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry (ICP), which belongs to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She has been Spanish delegate in the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc) and is member of the Spanish Catalysis and Chemical Engineering Societies. Her research activity has been developed in the frame of several projects, with both public and private funding, and is ascribed to the field of photocatalysis and environmental catalysis. She has worked in the synthesis and characterization of immobilized photocatalysts, including TiO2-coated transparent substrates and hybrid sepiolite-TiO2 conformed materials, and the evaluation of their photocatalytic activity for the elimination of bacteria, VOCs and H2S in air, both at bench scale and in especially designed solar reactor prototypes with real air. She is currently focusing in the application of in-situ and operando spectroscopic studies. Throughout her scientific career she has authored 1 book chapter and co-authored 22 research articles in SCI journals of high impact index, and she has made contributions to dozens of international conferences. She has supervised one Ph.D thesis and two undergraduate student projects and is an invited reviewer in several SCI journals.

  Fernando Fresno is currently a Research Associate in the Laboratory for Environmental Research at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, and Assistant Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences of the same University. He has conducted postdoctoral research at the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry of the Spanish National Research Council (ICP-CSIC, Madrid), 2010-2012, and the Spanish Centre for Reseach on Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT, Madrid), 2007-2010. He got his PhD in Chemistry in 2006 at the Autónoma University of Madrid (UAM), Spain, in 2006, working with a national doctoral grant at ICP-CSIC and the Inorganic Chemistry Department of UAM. He has worked as a visiting researcher in the University of Niigata (Japan), University of Aberdeen (UK) and IRCE Lyon (France). His research interests focus on photocatalytic processes for environmental and energy applications: Synthesis of new, more efficient photocatalytic materials; study of photocatalytic reactions; self-cleaning and superhydrophillic surfaces; and structure-activity relations in heterogeneous catalysts. He has participated in 9 funded research projects. He has co-authored 17 papers in peer-reviewed journals and one book chapter. He has contributed with over 30 communications to national and international conferences and is co-inventor in one patent. He has acted as an expert reviewer for several SCI journals and is a member of the editorial board of ISRN Nanomaterials and Journal of Energy. He is member of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry and the Spanish Society of Catalysis.