Javier García de Abajo obtained his PhD in condensed matter theory from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) in 1993. After spending three years in Berkeley National Lab., he became a staff scientist at CSIC (Spain) and was promoted to Research Professor in 2008. He is currently an ICREA Research Professor and leader of the Nanophotonics Theory group at ICFO. He has worked on atomic collisions, surface science, electron microscope spectroscopies, plasmonics, and theoretical nanophotonics. He has co-authored 400+ papers that have accumulated 40,000+ citations and an h index of 97 (WoK, Jan. 2023). He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Javier García de Abajo's research program on the theory of nanoscale photonics ranges from optical characterization free-electron microscope spectroscopies and ultrafast microscopy to studies of ultrasensitive single-molecule detection, quantum aspects of light-matter interaction, excitation and characterization of plasmons by electron beams, plasmonic metamaterials, quantum friction, radiative transfer and coherent control, two-dimensional materials, and ultrafast free-electron processes. These topics cover a broad spectrum of research in nanophotonics. This theoretical effort encompasses classical and quantum methods, both analytical and numerical, which are the basis to understand and propose new phenomena with application to biosensing as well as quantum optics and metrology.