About Me

I was born in Vigo (Galicia, Spain) in 1992, where I grew up and passed high school with honors in the IES Álvaro Cunqueiro. After getting one of the highest average grades of my autonomous community (Galicia) in the university entrance exams, I moved to Barcelona to continue my academic studies in the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

In 2014, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology with an excellent academic record. Soon after, I was granted by Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera to study a master’s degree in Advanced Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the UAB, which I completed in 2015.

In early 2016, I joined the Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO) Group at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) to start my PhD thesis on the Development of organic solar cells by combinatorial methods, which I carried out under the supervision of Prof. Mariano Campoy-Quiles. On October 19th 2020 I successfully defended my PhD thesis with excellent cum laude qualification.

From January 2021 to September 2022, I enrolled as postdoctoral research engineer in Prof. Olle Inganäs’ group settled in Linköping University, Sweden. My work focused on developing next-generation, building-integrated organic photovoltaic modules prepared by lamination.

From November 2022 to June 2024, I became Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Heidelberg University, Germany. Together with my mentor Prof. Jana Zaumseil, my tasks focused on developing novel carbon nanotube composites for energy harvesting and beyond.

From July 2024, I am UDC-InTalent Fellow at University of A Coruña, Spain. I join Jaime Martin’s group on Functional Polymer Materials as associate researcher and my tasks focus on improving the stability merits of organic solar cells through their microstructural investigation.

Scientific expertise

During my PhD I specialized in the solution-processing of thin films with controlled lateral heterogeneities. These include gradients on film thickness, composition and morphology for the high-throughput combinatorial optimization of organic solar cells. Gradients were realized by blade coating and required the development of unprecedented processing methodologies that also included mastering the prototyping and functioning of microfluidic devices (read more).

In parallel, I developed a methodology based on Raman spectroscopy to image the film heterogeneities, including the quantification of thickness and composition over large areas (read more). These advanced processing techniques enabled us to demonstrate the high-throughput combinatorial screening of binary and ternary organic photovoltaic blends with an unrivaled efficient use of resources and experimentation time.

The high-throughput screening of photovoltaic blends quickly led us to big data scenarios. Therefore, I became increasingly skilled in the statistical analysis and implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms to exploit the available datasets. We investigated both our high-throughput experimentation datasets (read more) and others obtained from computational screening studies (read more).

During my first postdoc in Sweden, my work delocalized between academia and industry, thus gaining valuable expertise on the needs for industrial up-scaling right from laboratory (academic) environments. We introduced high-performing and low cost solar cells based on lamination and demonstrated their promising integration onto buildings (including agrivoltaics).

During my second postdoc in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, I moved to the field of organic thermoelectrics to gain expertise in the manipulation of polymer-wrapped single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). During my time in Germany we developed our own thermoelectric setups (Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity) and thin film processing apparatus, and investigated novel doping methodologies in a high-throughput fashion.

My Other Passion: Triathlon

Long Distance Triathlon Spanish Championship, Pontevedra, 2018

I discovered triathlon while watching my Galician compatriot Javier Gómez-Noya in the London Olympics 2012. Some months later, in 2013, I rode my first sprint distance duathlon (5 km run, 20 km bike, 2.5 km run) in Ametlla del Vallés (Barcelona, Spain) yet I had had some previous introductory period to running with personal bests (PBs) already below 40′ over 10 km (<4:00 min/km). Soon after, I completed my first olympic distance triathlon (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run) in Logroño (La Rioja, Spain). In 2015, I completed my first middle distance triathlon (1.9 km swim, 90 km bike, 21.1 km run) in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain) and, since then, I have been finisher in 18 middle distance triathlons and 2 long distance triathlons (3 km swim, 120 km bike, 30 km run). In 2018, I qualified in second place in my age group (25-29) in the Long Distance Triathlon Spanish Championship,  thus earning a racing slot for the ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships held in Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain) in 2019. Therein, I qualified in 11th place within my age group.

Half Empuriabrava, 2020

Apart from triathlon, I have always pursued improving my PBs in running, such as in 10 km distance (with a current PB of 34’00” achieved in Laredo, Cantabria, Spain, in 2019), half marathon (PB 1h15’33” achieved in Vitoria, Spain, in 2023) and marathon (PB 2h45’15” -5th place overall- achieved in Logroño, Spain, in 2023).

Long Distance Triathlon World Championship, Pontevedra, 2019

During all these intense sportive years, I have been coordinating my full-time employment as PhD candidate and researcher with my daily trainings, summing up to 15 hours of training per week. If you are curious about my training logs, you can visit my Strava profile by clicking on the icon below and take a look at my blog section devoted to triathlon!

Follow me on Strava