Biography

Junkal Gutierrez obtained her Degrees in Chemical Engineering in 2005 and in Industrial Organization Engineering in 2008, both of them at the Polytechnic School of Donostia-San Sebastian, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). In 2007 she completed a Master in Wood, Paper and Biomaterials Engineering at the Polytechnic School of Donostia-San Sebastian (UPV/EHU). She joined the Group `Materials + Technologies´ of the Chemical Engineering and Environmental Department at the Polytechnic School of Donostia-San Sebastian (UPV/EHU) in 2008 as a researcher in the field of the development of multifunctional polymeric materials for new devices for nanotechnology. In 2009 she obtained a Master´s Degree in Renewable Materials Engineering at the same university. In that year, she was awarded a predoctoral fellowship (AE Modality) from the Basque Government and she obtained the PhD Degree from the UPV/EHU in 2012 with a thesis project focused on the development of novel polymeric composites containing nanoparticles synthesized by sol-gel technique, carried out in the Group `Materials + Technologies´ under the supervision of Prof. Iñaki Mondragon and Dr. Agnieszka Tercjak. She received the prize for the best PhD thesis in polymer science in 2012 by the Spanish Polymer Group (GEP) and Extraordinary Doctoral Awards for UPV/EHU. During 2013 she was granted by the UPV/EHU recent doctors program to continue her research.

Research

Since 2014, she is working at the Group `Materials + Technologies´ on her postdoctoral research granted by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) focused on novel multifunctional materials based on biopolymers from renewable resources under the supervision of Dr. Agnieszka Tercjak.

She has published 38 scientific articles and 9 chapters of books. Additionally, she has participated in more than 80 national and international conferences. Her research is mainly focused on the self-assembly of block copolymers, inorganic nanoparticles, polymeric thin films, nanostructured thermosetting systems, inorganic/organic nanocomposites based on block copolymers, sol-gel technique and biohybrid materials based on bacterial cellulose.