The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry honors researchers Francesc Illas and Albert Cortijos
Professor Francesc Illas, member of the Faculty of Chemistry and the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTC) of the UB, received the Medal of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), an institution dedicated to the promotion, dissemination and development of the discipline of chemistry. The jury of the RSEQ Awards also honoured researcher Albert Cortijos, from the mentioned Faculty and IQTC, who received the Young Researcher award in the category of Postdoctoral Researcher.
Professor Francesc Illas, member of the Faculty of Chemistry and the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTC) of the UB, received the Medal of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), an institution dedicated to the promotion, dissemination and development of the discipline of chemistry. The jury of the RSEQ Awards also honoured researcher Albert Cortijos, from the mentioned Faculty and IQTC, who received the Young Researcher award in the category of Postdoctoral Researcher.
Francesc Illas, professor from the Department of Materials Science and Physical Chemistry, is an expert on the study of electronic structure of surface and materials using computational methods from the field of quantum chemistry, a field on which he has published more than six-hundred scientific papers. He is the head of the Section of Physical Chemistry at the Department of Materials Science and Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry of the UB, and led the R&D&I Network on Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (XRQTC) from 2006 to 2019, as well as the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTCUB) of the UB, located at the Faculty of Chemistry, from 2008 to 2018. Member of the European Academy of Sciences and the editing committee of several scientific publications, he received the ICREA Academia award 2009 and 2015 and is the first researcher of the University of Barcelona to be appointed member of the Academia Europeaea Section of Chemistry (2017), among other distinctions.
Albert Cortijos is a postdoctoral researcher of the Beatriu de Pinós program, and received the Ramon Margalef Prize 2021 by the University of Barcelona to the top research published in a distinguished journal in the field of experimental and health sciences derived from a doctoral thesis. The awarded study, “Field-effects on single molecular circuitry. Electronic transport from synthetic to biological models”, uses an electric field to cause a catalysis (an acceleration of a chemical reaction) without the participation of any catalysing substance, a process that enhances a faster and more economic production of chemical compounds. Cortijos presented his thesis in 2017 at the UB, co-supervised by the lecturers Fausto Sanz-Carrasco and Ismael Díez-Pérez. He has been awarded the Antoni de Martí i Franquès Prize of Chemical Sciences 2018 by the Institute for Catalan Studies for his research study “Efectes magnètics i electrostàtics sobre circuits moleculars”, and has received one of the La Caixa Foundation Junior Leader Incoming 2022 postdoctoral grants.
The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, which highlights the high level of this editionʼs candidacies, expects the award ceremony to be held in an event to take place at a future date yet to be confirmed.
Further information in the website of the RSEQ Awards.