I graduated in physics in 1985 at the Balseiro Institute, Argentina. In 1989 I finished my PhD at the Max-Planck Institute FKF in Stuttgart with Prof. M. Cardona. It followed a two-year postdoc at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, USA, and back at MPI-FKF Stuttgart for three years. In 1996 I moved to the Technical University of Berlin for an appointment as Research & Teaching Associate, where in 1998 I completed my Habilitation. In 1999 I received the Karl-Scheel Prize from the Physical Society of Berlin for my contributions to the field of high-pressure semiconductor physics. In November 2003, I joined ICMAB-CSIC as ICREA Research Prof., co-founding the Optoelectronic Properties of Nanostructured Materials (NANOPTO) group. At ICMAB I created a facility for optical spectroscopy with micro/nanometer-scale resolution and set up a lab for high-pressure physics.

I am an experimental physicist with broad interests and experience in solid-state physics, optical spectroscopy (Raman scattering, photoluminescence, etc.), nanoscience and technology, energy and low-dimensional materials, and high-pressure techniques. Basically, I use light as a probe of physical properties of all kinds of molecular, organic and/or inorganic nanomaterials, looking for new behaviors or phenomena that arise as a direct consequence of the reduced dimensionality and/or size of the system under study. Although I perform basic research, I always have a clear application in mind, such as improving the performance of optoelectronic devices, enhancing thermoelectric and/or photovoltaic properties, enhancing solar energy harvesting, etc. I am currently leading group activities on high pressure physics, metal-halide perovskites, plasmonic hot-electron emitters and the development of novel light-souce concepts.