Invited Speakers

Ainara Aguadero is a Tenured Scientist at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC and Visiting Reader in Energy Materials in the Department of Materials, Imperial College London. Her research focuses on the quantitative analysis and optimisation of ion and electron dynamics in complex oxides, bulk surfaces and interfaces. She uses a combination of structural, chemical and electrochemical analysis including surface-sensitive techniques and operando characterisation to develop the next generation of solid-state energy storage and conversion devices.

Montse Casas-Cabanas is an Ikerbasque research associate and the scientific coordinator of the Electrochemical Energy Storage Area at CIC energiGUNE. Her research interests focus on the design of next generation battery chemistries and the understanding of phenomena that occur in energy storage devices through a multidisciplinary approach, with a focus in crystal chemistry. She employs cost-efficient synthetic processes, with a focus on sustainability and recyclability, in combination with scattering, imaging, and spectroscopic techniques to develop fundamental understanding in structure-property correlations. She is recognized in the field for her contributions to the study of electrode reaction mechanisms using operando experiments and, more  specifically, in the study of the impact of structural disorder and defects in the electrochemical performance, for which she pioneered the development of the FAULTS software, which is being increasingly used by the materials community.

She is actively involved in the MESC+ (Materials for Energy Storage and Conversion) Erasmus Mundus master course, the Alistore-ERI network of excellence and Battery 2030+ initiative. She was elected in 2021 Technical Advisor of the Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA) Working Group 1 “Advanced Materials and Manufacturing” and is now Technical Leader of the “New Emerging Technologies” group in the Batteries Europe (BE) technology and innovation platform. She is also serving as vice-president of the Energy and Sustainability Specialized Group (GEEN) of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

She has been recently awarded with the 2021 Young Researcher award from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. 

Dr Sonia Escolástico is a Tenured Scientist at the Instituto de Tecnología Química, ITQ. PhD in 2013 by Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), her work was devoted to gas separation membranes based on mixed ionic conductors and their applications in catalysis. She has co-authored 48 peer-reviewed contributions in international journals, and participated in more than 50 international conferences and national and European research projects, including industry contracts. In 2010, she received the Young Scientist Award by the European Material Research Society. From 2015 to 2017, Dr. Escolástico joined the Institute for Microprocess Engineering (IMVT) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. In the present, she works in the Energy Conversion and Storage group of ITQ and her main activities deal with materials science, electrochemical membrane reactors, microreactors and process intensification. 

Dr David Muñoz-Rojas received his degree in organic chemistry in 1999 and master’s degree in chemical engineering (2000) from the Instituto Químico de Sarrià (IQS, Barcelona, Spain), obtaining the P. Salvador Gil, S.I. 2000 prize. He did his PhD in materials science (2004) at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona (CSIC-UAB). Thereafter, he worked as a postdoc at the Laboratoire de Réactivité et Chimie des Solides in Amiens (France), the Research Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, and the University of Cambridge (Device Materials Group, UK). Dr. Muñoz-Rojas is currently CNRS research director at the Laboratoire des Matériaux et du Génie Physique in Grenoble, France. His research focuses on using and developing cheap and scalable chemical approaches for the fabrication of novel functional materials for electronic and optoelectronic applications. In particular, he has pioneered the development of the novel spatial atomic layer deposition (SALD) technique for the deposition of active components for optoelectronic devices. He is currently further developing SALD to extend the possibilities and fields of application of this exciting technique though several French National (several as coordinator), regional and local projects and a FET Open project that he coordinates. He has published 100 papers, and several book chapters. He is coeditor of a book on materials for renewable energy applications and is co-inventor of 6 patents. https://sites.google.com/site/workdmr/

José Ángel Pardo (PhD, 2001) is an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), where he teaches Materials Science, Nanomaterials and Surface Technology at the Faculties of Engineering and Science. Along his scientific career he has tackled several problems in optical spectroscopy, laser processing, ionic and mixed conductors, magnetic and magnetoresistive materials, and epitaxial strain engineering. His current research at the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials Science of Aragón is focused on the growth and characterization of thin films of novel ferroic oxides. He has paid particular attention to multiferroic Ba-doped SrMnO3 and ferroelectric HfO2. José Ángel was a visiting scholar in the universities of Pavia, Berkeley and Cambridge.