Katherine Villa obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and pursued postdoctoral research at IREC and IBEC before working as a senior scientist at the Center for Advanced Functional Nanorobots in Prague. Since 2020, she has led a multidisciplinary team at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), exploring how light can power motion, assembly, and chemical reactivity at the micro- and nanoscale for environmental and energy applications. In 2025, she became an ICREA Research Professor. Her work has been recognized with distinctions such as the EuChemS Lecture Award, the Young Researcher Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, election to the Young Academy of Spain, and competitive funding including a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, an ERC Starting Grant, and an ERC Proof of Concept.
Research interests
Her research focuses on light-driven micromotors and nanostructured materials designed for pollutant degradation, water purification, waste valorization, and solar-to-chemical energy conversion. She investigates photoinduced propulsion mechanisms, programmable self-assembly, and collective behavior in active matter, and studies how optical fields steer propulsion, interactions, and emergent organization. She also develops rationally engineered multicomponent heterojunctions that enhance light harvesting and charge separation, enabling efficient solar-fuel generation and selective chemical transformations. By creating responsive micromotors that operate autonomously in complex environments, her research aims to advance sustainable technologies that address pressing global environmental and energy challenges.
Selected research activities
– Early Carrer Editotial Board of Nano Letters.
– ERC Proof-of-Concept (PhotoSERS project).
– Consolidación Investigadora (Steermotors project).
– Co-Director of the PhD thesis defended by Neus Sunyer i Pons “Mg-based catalysts for the electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction” (ICIQ).
– Director of Master thesis defended by Angie Johana Bolaños Burbano and Luisa Natalia Cordoba Urresti (ICIQ).
– Keynote Speaker: 17th International conference on materials chemistry (MC17), RSC, Scotland, UK, ICRA Frontier School 2025, Girona, Spain and “Quasi Living Systems: Merge and Emerge” IBEC workshop.
– Invited Lectures: IISc Bangalore (India), Universidad del Quindío (Colombia), EPFL (Switzerland).