Education

Sep. 2003-Dec. 2007 Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry, University of Edinburgh (UK), (Awarded Jun. 2008) Adviser – Prof. Michael F. Greaney: Synthetic Studies on Anislactone- type Sesquiterpenes.
1997-2003 MSc. in Chemistry, Universidad de Granada (Spain)

Linguistic skills

English – Full proficiency, written and spoken Spanish – Mother Tongue
Finnish – Working proficiency Portuguese – Medium command

Current position

Sept. 2016 - Principal Investigator (PI), University Researcher, University of Helsinki .

Previous research experience

Aug. 2012 - Aug. 2016 Postdoctoral Researcher Associate, University of Helsinki, Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry. Adviser – Prof. Timo Repo: Study of new Rh-(I) catalytic hydrogenation methodologies based on Wilkinson’s catalyst & Valorization of CO2 as C1-feedstock.

Mar. 2011 - May 2012 Postdoctoral Researcher in Catalysis, University of Helsinki. Adviser – Dr. Juho Helaja: Development of novel heterogeneous gold-catalysed reactions.

Oct. 2008 - Jun. 2010 Postdoctoral Researcher in Inorganic Chemistry, University of Granada (Spain). Adviser – Prof. E. Colacio: Design and syntheses of privileged heteroaromatic scaffolds and investigation of their coordinative modes with ‘3d’ and ‘4f’ transition metals towards the preparation of single molecular magnets (SMMs).

Research funding

Jan. 2017 Faculty of Science of the University of Helsinki, Support funding Autumn 2016, Personal Research Grant– 35000 € (6 months)

Jun. 2016 Otto Malm Donationsfond (Author), Personal Research Grant – 7000 €

Mar. 2015 Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation (Author), Postdoctoral research grant:
Carbon dioxide fixation for the synthesis of high value-added superantibiotics – 23,000€

Jun. 2013 Academy of Finland (Co-author), Academy of Finland Research Project: Catalytic Oxidation and C-H activation. No. 267925. Awarded period (2013-2017) – 639,208€

Jun. 2012 Academy of Finland (Co-author), Academy of Finland Research Project: Catalytic Organic Transformations on Au Nanoparticles. No. 258348. Awarded period (2012-2016) – 492,589€

Supervision

During the course of my postdoctoral work I have trained and mentored several undergraduate and PhD students, “de facto” acting as secondary supervisor:

MSc. Tom Wirtanen, MSc. Mikko Mäkelä, Mr. Otto Laukkanen – Dr. Helaja’s group (3–12 months), leading to the publication: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 11835–11839.

MSc. Mikko Muuronen – Dr. Helaja’s group (2 months), leading to the publication: Organometallics 2012, 31, 4320−4330.

MSc. Teemu Niemi – Laboratory Inorganic Chemistry (24 months), leading to the publications: Chem. Eur J. 2016, 22, 10355–10359 and Chem. Eur J. 2014, 20, 8867–8871.

Collaborations

During my postdoctoral training, I was responsible to support the multidisciplinary character of my research by attracting international and internal collaborators, coordinating their contributions with my own:

 Dr. Sami Heikkinen (Head NMR engineer & lecturer, University of Helsinki, Finland): NMR mechanistic studies of our catalytic processes-/systems. (Since 2012).

 Dr. Israel Fernandez (Lecturer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain): DFT calculations and theoretical studies of our catalytic processes-/systems. (Since 2013)

Awards

2003 EPSRC, Postgraduate Scholarship in Organic Chemistry.
2002 Spanish Council of Education and Culture, Undergraduate Grant.

Presentations and lectures

17th March 2016 American Chemical Society, 251st National Meeting, San Diego, California, US, Inorganic Chemistry Division (Oral presentation, 20 min)

30th Sep-2nd Oct 2015 “ICIQ Symposium: Lights on Chemistry” ICIQ (Tarragona, Spain) attendance by invitation (similar criteria to Bürgenstock Conferences)

11th Mar. 2015 3rd Nordic Meeting in Organometallic Chemistry (Oral presentation, 20 min), University of Lund (Sweden).

22nd Feb. 2008 Max-Planck Institute on coal research, Mülheim an der Rühr (Germany) (Oral presentation, 30 min).