Additional information

For my undergraduate research I worked on lab-scale research methodologies for biogas production, which led to pilot-scale demonstration units. My Ms. Science Thesis showed unprecedented preservation of structure during water evaporation in mesopores (J. Mater. Chem A. 2013) achieved at University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

In my PhD work with Prof. Arias (Spain) I pioneered new routes for furfural production through pore size tuning (Appl. Catal. B 2014) and the design of active Lewis/Brönsted sites on MgF2 in collaboration with Prof. Kemnitz at Humboldt University (Germany) (J. Catal. 2013 and Catal. Sci. Techn. 2014), or integrated in sophisticated catalytic systems with stripping processes that increase product purity (Green Chem. 2012).

During my first postdoc in Spain I worked on mild-oxidation methods via Fenton chemistry to preserve acid-sites on mesoporous materials after humin deposition (Catal. Sci. Techn. 2016). This was the first example showing how surface oligomers from dehydration catalysts could be regenerated at low temperatures, resulting in remarkable structural benefits versus conventional calcination processes. During my second postdoc, taken at University of California Berkeley (USA) with Prof. Iglesia, I focused on kinetic and mechanistic aspects of alkene oligomerization using Ni-based catalysts. Unprecedented stabilizations were achieved via intrapore liquid-oligomerization reactions. Such stabilization was also observed for alkene and alkane mixtures, serving to generalize the effects of such liquids to other hydrocarbons or reactions. This work (J. Catal. 2017) also allowed to open new research opportunities using Ru-based MOFs (Nature Comm. 2019).