Bio

I am an Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Applied Physical Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), effective from September 1, 2023. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, specializing in Physical Chemistry, in 1998, and my PhD in 2005, both from UAM. My doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Miguel Paniagua (UAM) and Prof. Octavio Roncero (CSIC), was conducted at the Autonomous University, the Institute of Fundamental Physics (CSIC), and the Catholic University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). The thesis focused on the study of collision and photo-initiated processes of harpoon mechanisms in two triatomic systems.

My postdoctoral work commenced with a temporary position in the Department of Applied Physical Chemistry at UAM. In 2006, I received a two-year fellowship from the Ministry of Education (Spain) to work at the University of Bristol (UK) under the supervision of Prof. Gabriel Balint-Kurti, focusing on the optimal control of photodissociation processes. Alongside Prof. Graham A. Worth (University of Birmingham), we were awarded a three-year project grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in 2008 to study the dynamic Stark control of photodissociation processes. In 2010, I returned to Spain as a postdoctoral fellow under a Consolider national project grant to study the photodissociation and collision processes of molecules of interstellar interest. I joined Prof. Octavio Roncero’s group at CSIC for two and half years under this project before being appointed as a PhD assistant professor at UAM. I completed the tenure track in December 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor. As part of the Applied Physical Chemistry department, I continue my research in electronic structure calculations and quantum dynamics, as well as the control of reactivity.

I maintain several collaborations with national and international groups, all funded by national and European projects. At the university, I fulfill the teaching responsibilities assigned by the department and am actively involved in departmental coordination tasks as a deputy head. In 2017, I obtained accreditation to participate in the DoIng program initiated by the university, which offers bilingual Spanish/English degrees.

I have accumulated more than 900 citations, with an average of 50 citations per year over the last five years. Out of 43 papers published in indexed journals. I have participated in a total of 15 projects, including eight funded by the Spanish national agency, one by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in England, and six by the European Commission. I have delivered over 25 invited or contributed talks at international research meetings and conferences, and presented an additional 26 contributions in poster form. I have given scientific seminars at six different academic institutions and taught a course on Quantum Dynamics at the M2D School – School on High-Performance Multilayer Molecular Dynamics Approaches. Additionally, I conducted a webinar as part of the doctoral webinar program “Challenges of Digital and Technological Transformations: From the Laboratory to the Real World.”

I have visited 11 national and international academic institutions and served on more than 10 thesis committees. I regularly review papers for journals in the fields of Physical, Theoretical, and Computational Chemistry.

I have co/supervised a total of nine undergraduate projects for Chemistry degree students at the Autonomous University of Madrid and seven master’s theses in the Master’s program in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. At the moment I co-supervised two PhD thesis, one with Dr. Susana Gómez Carrasco (USAL) and the other one with Dr. Alexandre Zanchet (CSIC).