Ainara Saralegi
(Associate Professor)
Web address
Biography
PhD in Engineering of Renewable Materials by the UPV/EHU (2013), with special mention of ‘International Thesis’ and extraordinary doctorate award of the UPV/EHU. She is currently working as Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. She worked as a research technologist at Tecnalia Research & Innovation Foundation (2018). She worked as a temporary lecturer at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the UPV/EHU (2017), in the Department of Organic Chemistry II. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship (2015-2016) from the Basque Government, and she worked in the Advanced Materials Research Group, at Virginia Tech University (Virginia, USA), under the direction of Dr. Johan Foster. Throughout 2014, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal), under the direction of Dr. Filomena Barreiro. During her PhD studies (2010-2013), she spent 3 months at the Adolphe Merkle Institue (Switzerland), under the direction of Drs. Christoph Weder and Johan Foster. She has actively participated in more than 15 regional, national, and/or European calls for proposals, serving as the principal investigator in two of them. She has published 23 scientific articles (Hirsh factor=18, more than 1000 citations) and one book chapter. Additionally, she has participated in more than 40 national and international conferences. Her research is mainly focused on the design, synthesis, investigation of structure-property relationships, and exploitation of novel functional polymer systems, especially in materials derived from renewable resources and/or recyclable materials.
Research
During her predoctoral studies her research was focused on the synthesis and characterization of thermoplastic polyurethanes, as well as the isolation of nanocrystals from different sources, and their incorporation in polymer bionanocomposites synthesis. Moreover, she studied the response of these materials to different stimuli, as well as their applications as smart materials. Her current research topics are more focused on the design, synthesis, investigation of structure-property relationships, and exploitation of novel functional polymer systems, especially in materials derived from renewable resources and/or recyclable materials.