Prof. Josep Puigmartí-Luis is the head of the ChemInFlow group located at the University of Barcelona and he is also affiliated with Institut de Química Teòrica i Computacional (IQTC) that was honored with the "Maria de Maeztu" Unit of Excellence, in 2021. He completed his PhD in supramolecular chemistry at the Institut de Ciències dels Materials de Barcelona (2008), and right after, he received a competitive postdoctoral ETH fellowship. In 2012, he was nominated as a Ramón y Cajal researcher, but after two years, he decided to move back to Switzerland where in 2015 was awarded an ERC Starting Grant, a Chair of Excellence (France) in 2018, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Valencia in 2019. In 2021, Prof. Puigmartí-Luis received the emergent consolidated research group recognition from the Catalan research system, earned a favorable Accreditation as Full Professor from AQU Catalunya in 2023, and the same year he was also honored with the Rising Star Award from IEEE 3M-NANO.
Research interests
Self-assembly can be described as a dynamic process present in nature that has long been used for the evolution of living organisms, but is still scarcely understood by modern science. The main reason being that self-assembly is generally studied under equilibrium conditions. Despite the remarkable progress made in materials engineering, the quest for a technology to study and kinetically control self-assembled processes is still incomplete. Like in nature, only through kinetic controlled conditions we can achieve materials with a rationalized function and efficiency; a result that will open new horizons in nanotechnology. Therefore, the research activities of my group are centered on accomplishing an extraordinary kinetic control over self-assembly by controlling the fluid flow phenomena of reagents at the micro and nanoscale.
Selected research activities
In 2023, I received the Rising Star Award at the IEEE 3M-NANO, gained a Full Professor Accreditation from AQU, and joined the Management and Steering Committees of the EU4MOFS COST project (Action CA22147). I organized a special session at MARSS in Abu Dhabi, served as a Visiting Professor at Changchun University of Science and Technology (CUST) (China) and I have attended 13 international conferences, 12 of them as an Invited speaker.
In the same period, the ChemInFlow group published 15 articles with an Impact Factor exceeding 16. Gemma Llauradó secured an FPI scholarship, James Nicholas successfully completed his PhD with honors, and Dr. Albert Aragonès accepted a Serra Hunter Lecturer position at Universitat de Barcelona after declining a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship. We also welcomed new members, including a Master student, Sílvia Veglioni, a Industrial PhD, Natalia Salvat Lozano, and visiting PhD students Maria Aurora Guarducci from La Sapienza di Roma and Xu Huang from China.