MAGNES
Nanomateriales Magnéticos para Energía y Salud
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.Isaac Newton
Montserrat Rivas
When Dr. Rivas finished her master’s degree in 1991, she received a doctoral scholarship in the physics department at the University of Oviedo. She started working on magneto-optics in thin films for media recording, doing internships at the Laboratory of Magnetism and Optics (CNRS) in Paris and Laboratory Louis Néel (CNRS) in Grenoble, France. While a doctoral student, she obtained a position as an Assistant Professor in 1992. This full-time position slowed her progress towards her thesis but allowed her to gain extensive teaching experience. She switched research groups and was promoted to nondoctoral Associate Professor in 1999. In 2005, she defended her thesis on nanocrystalline magnetic materials. She became a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Oviedo in 2008. During this period of her career, she had two children.
In 2012, she formed a group for her main research line: superparamagnetic nanoparticles and sensors to make sensitive, rapid, quantitative diagnostic tests. Since then, all of her supervised theses have been on this subject. During the first few years, she established contacts and dialogue with researchers from different fields, which was intellectually enriching. Thus, Dr. Rivas’s articles appear in journals in various disciplines. The resulting close collaboration with analytical and inorganic chemists, molecular biologists, medical doctors, and various engineering specialities led to significant advances towards functional nanoparticles and prototypes, some of which are in patent review.
Dr. Rivas has frequently served on scientific, publication, and program committees of many international conferences related to magnetism, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, nanomaterials, and other applications. She has organized special sessions and symposia in these conferences on magnetism and healthcare. This has given her a broad vision of nanomagnetism, which, in turn, has helped her organize multidisciplinary research teams and consortia. She has organized and presented talks at “Women in Magnetism” events at the 10th and 11th International Conference on Fine Particle Magnetism (ICFPM). She has given seminars to students on effective public speaking at the 2022 Spanish Magnetism Club (CEMAG) summer school, the 2022 Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) conference, and at other venues.
Jesús Ángel Blanco
Jesus Ángel Blanco received his B.S. and Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Cantabria, Spain, in 1987 and 1992, respectively. He is currently professor of Condensed Matter Physics, Solid State Division, in the Department of Physics at the University Oviedo (Asturias), Spain. He spent his early career in the Louis Néel Laboratory (Grenoble), France. He has been a visiting researcher at several laboratories LURE, ORNL, Birbeck College and ISIS-RAL. At the beginning, he worked on commensurate and incommensurate magnetic systems, focusing broadly on the determination of magnetic structures and magnetic excitations.
Presently he is heading the Advanced Functional Nanomaterials’ group, and he is involved in a number of research projects devoted to investigate nanomaterials and caloric materials. He is a long-term user of large scientific (neutron scattering and synchrotron radiation) facilities since 1987. He has co-authored more than 230 papers, 210 articles in international scientific journals that are gathered in JCR (H=25 with more than 2500 citations-ISI; H=27, I10= 88 around 3000 citations-GoogleScholar), several chapters of books and numerous communications and papers presented at national and international conferences on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. He has supervised 9 thesis (and 1 more thesis is on-going) and 5 undergraduate theses. He has been a member of the scientific committee of the Laue Langevin Institute; member of the National Commission of Neutron Users; founder and secretary of the Spanish Magnetism Club, external evaluator ANECA, ANEP, NSF, French Agency, Argentina and German project evaluation, external evaluator of EU within the M-ERA-net program and has participated as a member of the evaluation panel of Spanish proposals in the ILL and Spline in the ESRF. He has also been a member of the international assessment panels at the ILL, Leon Brillouin, ESRF, NIST, and APS. He has been a member of the Spanish Society of Neutron Techniques, and coordinator of the technical scientific services of the University of Oviedo (2014-2017) and coordinator of the PhD Program “Fundamental and Applied Physics” at the University of Oviedo (2012-2017). He has delivered more than 5000 h. of teaching at the University of Oviedo.
Pedro Gorria
Pedro Gorria Korres has a degree and PhD in Physical Sciences from the University of the Basque Country. After obtaining his PhD, he moved to the University of Oviedo (1996), initially occupying a position as Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, then Full Professor at the University (1999), and since 2016 he is Full Professor at the Applied Physics area in the same department. His research work began in the group of Prof. Barandiarán around the study of the correlation between crystalline structure, microstructure and magnetic properties of various alloys and metallic compounds based on iron.
As a professor at the University of Oviedo, he launched three differentiated lines of research in collaboration with Prof. J. A. Blanco: (i) Starting in 1999, he began the study of magneto-volumic coupling in Fe-Cu and Fe-Ni alloys obtained by mechanical alloy. (ii) in 2005 a collaboration began with Prof. A. B. Fuertes (INCAR-CSIC, Oviedo) on the study of the correlation between microstructure and magnetism in Fe, Co and Ni nanoparticles embedded in porous amorphous carbon matrices; (iii) the following year (2006) and thanks to the special action NAN2004-09203-C04-03 (IP), he began his research on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in various materials. In each of the 3 lines of research mentioned, at least one doctoral thesis has been developed, and the most notable results have given rise to publications in high-impact journals, which have received a large number of citations and have led to the invitation to numerous international congresses as well as universities/research centres in several countries (more than 40 plenary or invited presentations). He is co-author of 146 articles. He has a high degree of collaboration, exceeding in 120 the total number of co-authors, belonging to more than 45 institutions from 15 different countries. He is co-editor of 3 volumes in three international journals, one of them, J. Alloys and Compounds, with IF> 4. He is a regular reviewer for various scientific journals in the areas of Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Chemistry-Physics or Materials Science. He has also acted as an evaluator of research projects for ANEP, AEI, FONCyT (Argentina) and as an expert for AENOR. He has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (Elsevier) in the 2012-2014 triennium. He has been president of the organizing committee of 3 national and international congresses, and a member of scientific/advisory/program committees in more than 20. He is a regular user of large facilities (neutron sources and synchrotron radiation) and has participated as a member of the panel of evaluation of Spanish proposals in the ILL and as a member of the international panels also in the ILL. He has been for 4 years president of the Spanish Society of Neutronic Techniques (SETN). Regarding his teaching work, he has taught for more than 25 years (≈ 4500 teaching hours from first, second and third cycle courses in the pre-Bologna curricula to the current bachelor’s and master’s degrees). He has co-directed 5 Doctoral Theses (another one in progress) and 4 Bachelor Thesis, as well as various TFG and TFM.
José Carlos Martínez-García
José Carlos Martínez-García currently works at the Department of Physics, University of Oviedo, as Associate Professor. He received his BSc in Physics (1988) from the University of Valencia (Spain) and his PhD (2012) from the University of Oviedo (Spain). Nowadays, his research areas are magnetic materials and computational modelling, focused specially on FORC analysis of soft magnetic materials (based on First Order Reversal Curves measurements), and on bio-sensing by means of magnetic nanoparticles. He belongs to a multidisciplinary research group devoted to magnetic lateral flow immunoassays for point-of-care bioanalysis, and to NanoBioAp, a spanish cluster of excellence designed to bring together different research teams devoted to nanomaterials (both organic and inorganic) to develop bio-technological applications.
Pablo Álvarez Alonso
Pablo Álvarez-Alonso received his PhD in Materials Science from the University of Oviedo in 2012, focused on the interplay between crystal structure and magnetic properties, such us the magnetocaloric and magnetovolume effects. He did a 5-years postdoctoral stay in the University of the Basque Country working in Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys and nanopatterned magnetic thin films. He has done stays in Instituto Laue-Langevin (France), Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (Mexico), and Academy of Science (Slovakia). He is assistance professor at the University of Oviedo since 2017.
His main current research interests are the caloric effects in Shape Memory Alloys and intermetallic compounds. Other of his research interests are: magnetic properties of intermetallic alloys, magnetoimpedance in amorphous ribbons and wires, and dynamical properties of microwires.
He has co-autored more than 45 articles published in Q1 journals (1153 citations, h-index = 19 in GoogleScholar). He is external evaluator for Argentina and Vietnam project evaluation systems and referee of more than 25 international journals. He is guess editor of a special issue in Materials (Q1 journal).
David Martínez Blanco
David received his B.S. degree in Physics and his PhD in Materials Science from the University of Oviedo in 2002 and 2009 respectively. During his studies, he spent stays in Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (France), Institut Laue-Langevin (France) and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (United Kingdom) Since 2006 he works as support technician at the Scientific and Technical Services (STS), in the Magnetic Measurements and x-ray Diffraction units.
His PhD research was honoured with the extraordinary doctorate award in Physics and it was focused on the correlation between magnetic and structure transformations in metallic binary alloys obtained by ball milling route. Besides of the studying in mechanical alloyed materials, he has also interested on the research about invar compounds, magnetic properties of ferrites and metallic oxides, magnetocaloric materials and magnetic nanoparticles for soil remediation.He has co-autored more than 50 articles published in scientific journals (815 citations, h-index = 15 in GoogleScholar) and has refereed for the Journals of Alloys and Compounds and Results in Physics. He is member of the Spanish Society of Neutron Techniques (SETN).
Mª Paz Fernández-García
Mª Paz Fernández-García received her B. Sci. degree and her PhD in Physics from the University of Oviedo in 2005 and 2010, respectively. She completed a period of 5-year postdoc at the Instituto de Física de Materiais Avançados, Nanotecnología e Fotónica (IFIMUP, Portugal). She has been a visiting researcher at Instituto Nacional del Carbon (CSIC, Spain); Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón (ICMA, Spain); Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INA, Spain); Departamento de Ciencia de la Tierra y de la Materia Condensada (CITIMAC, Spain); International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL, Portugal); Rede de Química e Tecnología (REQUIMTE, Portugal), Institut des Molécules et Materiaux du Mans (IMMM, CNRS, France). Besides, she is a long-term user of the Elettra Sincrotrone (Italy). She holds since 2016 a position of Assistant professor at the University of Oviedo and has delivered more than 1200 h of teaching.
Her areas of scientific activity are Nanotechnology, Magnetism and Materials Science including metallic and ferrite magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic high-aspect ratio nanoparticles for photocatalytic applications and, spintronics. Her actual interests are focused on the synthesis, functionalization and physico-chemical characterization of superparamagnetic nanomaterials for bio-application and bio-sensing. She has been the principal researcher of one local project and, team member of 4 national, 5 international and 2 regional research projects. Recently, she is enrolled in FeSTEM, a european project (Erasmus+ KA2) devoted to female empowerment in STEM studies. She has been member of the local organizing committee of ISMANAM-2011 and ICFPM-2019 international conferences. She is co-authored of 1 book chapter and more than 20 articles in international scientific journals that are gathered in JCR (550 citations, h-index =11 in GoogleScholar). She has supervised 8 Master Thesis and 6 Final Degree projects (1 PhD is ongoing).
Roberto Iglesias
Roberto Iglesias is an associate professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Oviedo, Spain, beginning in 2008. He is specialized in structural, diffusive and magnetic properties simulation of critical raw materials (CRM) and alloys subject to extreme conditions, through electronic structure calculations using ab initio and atomistic codes and multiscale modelling techniques. In the last six years, he has been coauthor of 13 peer-reviewed articles, two more submitted, with more than 75% of them in the Q1, and of about 40 conference communications and presentations, about fifteen of them by invitation. He has contributed to three review book chapters. According to Scopus, h index is 13. PI of a FP7 project and two local University grants. From that date, he has participated in 8 other European, national and regional projects, and a few more under evaluation, 9 supercomputational projects of the Spanish RES (several as a PI) and one more, of one year duration, from the European PRACE initiative. Starting in 2009, he has been responsible for a contract agreement on scientific cooperation between the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI, Switzerland) and Uniovi.
He has co-organised an international workshop. He is preparing a special issue as a Guest Editor of Frontiers in Materials and is part of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Nuclear Engineering (MDPI). He acts currently as a reviewer of 5 international journals and the E-MRS conferences. He is a member of several scientific societies (SETN, AUSE, CEMAG, SOCIEMAT, NANOFUTURES, CEIDEN, GE3C, SNS-SSDN, TMS), networks (ROSALES, MULTINANOMAT, EERA-JPNM, ERRIN, EMMC, UNIVERSOS- LAT, 2 COST ACTIONS) and of the Nuclear Fusion Institute (IFN-GV, UPM). Three positive six- year research activity evaluations, granted by the Spanish National Research Activity Evaluation Commission, last one awarded in 2016. Supervisor of one PhD thesis and currently supervising another, as well as of the B. Sc. of five undergraduates, and a Master thesis. He has been the president of two European PhD thesis defense committees, the secretary in two more and vocal in other two. He is currently responsible for teaching a course in Simulation of materials and nanostructures within the Master’s Degree in Advanced Physics of the University of Oviedo. He has delivered lectures and talks in international training and summer schools and restricted workshops on topics related to multiscale modelling, nuclear fusion technology, critical raw materials and applications of artificial intelligence to materials design.
Mª Florentina Barbés
Mª Florentina Barbés received her BSc in Physics at the University of Cantabria in 1995 and her PhD (Extraordinary Doctorate Award) from the University of Oviedo in 2004 (Science and Technology Program). She is currently Associate Profesor (since 2011) in the Science of Materials and Metallurgy Enginery department (University of Oviedo). She is member os the “Ironmaking, Steelmaking and Materials Investigation Group” from this university . She is the coordinator of Master about Science and Technology of Materials . Her reseachs areas are: wear corrosion simulation, nanobainitic steel and Shot Peening Surface treament.
Mª Arántzazu Argüelles Vélez
Mª Arántzazu Argüelles Vélez currently works at the Department of Material Science and Metallurgical Engineering, University of Oviedo, as Assistant Professor. She received her BSc in Physics from the University of Cantabria (1995) and her PhD in Science from the University of Oviedo (2010). She has worked in the private and public sector, mainly in the area of metallic materials applied to automotive and energy industries, participating in more than 20 research projects, some of them funded by companies such as Grupo Premo, Ferroatlántica or Arcelor. In 2008, she took over the running of the R&D Department of Solar Kuantica, a company in the renewable energy sector. In 2010, she also assumed the control of its maintenance department. She combined this professional activity with a doctoral thesis work in the Department of Physics at the University of Oviedo (Structural and magnetic characterization of vermiculites interspersed with Fe and Ni, 2010) in the field of magnetic materials.
Since being associated to the Department of Material Science and Metallurgical Engineering, she has led a research line in magnetism and characterization of magnetic materials, working in close collaboration with the University of Cantabria and CENIM-CSIC. Within this framework, she has established a research agreement with the company Arcelor-Mittal, materialized in 5 research contracts (2018 to present).
Lourdes Marcano
Javier López-García
Javier López-García received his Ph.D. in Sciences and Industrial Technology from the Universidad Pública de Navarra in 2019, totally developed at Institut Laue-Langevin, where he studied the influence of the microstructure in magnetic and physical properties in the metamagnetic shape memory alloys by neutron diffraction technique. His work was based on the variation of the microstructural parameters (grain size, internal strains, long-range atomic order, dislocation, vacancies,…) by thermo-mechanical treatments and study the influence of those parameters for magnetocaloric applications. After his Ph.D., he worked in Universidad Pública de Navarra developing two measurement systems, one to measure the adiabatic temperature change of the metamagnetic shape memory alloys and another to measure the magnetoelectric coupling between a piece of magnetic shape memory alloy and a piezoelectric material for energy harvesting applications. During his career he published 11 papers in international journals, participate in 18 national and international conferences,s and in more than 10 neutrons and synchrotron experiments. Actually, he is working in the Universidad de Oviedo as a professor in the applied physic department.
María Salvador Fernández
María Salvador finished her Chemical Engineering Degree in 2013 at the University of Valladolid (Spain). She carried out bioengineering process research at the Universysity of Wageningen (The Netherlands) for a year. Afterwards, she obtained the Master in Biotechnology of Environment and Health at the University of Oviedo (Spain). She obtained her PhD in Material Science under the co-supervision of the University of Oviedo, (Spain) and Istituto di Struttura della Materia, Rome (Italy) supervised by Montserrat Rivas and José Carlos Martínez in the first institution and Davide Peddis in the second one. Nowadays, she enjoys a Margarita Salas fellowship at the Institute of Materials Science of Madrid and the Department of Physics at the University of Oviedo, where her research activity is focused in the synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles to use them in different biotechnological applications, mainly biodetection and bioregeneration. Currently, she leads the MagCOVID project funded by the IEEE MagSoc Seed Funding.
Recently, the IEEE Magnetis Society created the Students in Magnetism section, in which María participates as deputy Chair. This projects aims to disseminate science related to magnetism and create a community among students in the field.
She is the web developer and community manager of the NanoBioAp Network, the Spanish Club of Magnetism (CEMAG) and MAGNES group. She has also taken part as organizing committee in international congresses such as NALS 2017, ISMANAM 2018, and ICFPM19.
Vanessa Pilati
Vanessa Pilati Peixoto Jucá is a postdoc researcher at the University of Oviedo (Spain). She obtained her BSc degree in Physics (2008) and a MSc degree in Materials Science and Engineering (2011) from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil). Later, she received an MSc degree in Physics (2013) and completed her PhD in Physics (2017) at Universidade de Brasília (Brazil). She carried out research in the synthesis and characterization of doped iron oxide nanoparticles for magnetic hyperthermia applications. During this period, she conducted several experiments in collaboration with Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón at University of Zaragoza (Spain). Nowadays she is working on the synthesis, functionalization and characterization of superparamagnetic nanoparticles for magnetic bio-detection and other bio-applications.
Jose Luis Marqués Fernández
Jose Luis Marqués Fernández finished his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design at the ESAPA Avilés (Spain) in 2014. In the next years, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technologies Engineering and a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering both at the University of Oviedo (Spain). At the moment he is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oviedo under the supervision of Montserrat Rivas. His research is focused on the development of techniques and equipment for the detection and quantification of magnetic nanoparticles for a wide range of applications. These applications include medical, industrial, and environmental and the equipment ranges from laboratory-grade to low-cost portable devices.
Mona Mahmoud Fadel Abdel Aziz
Mona Fadel completed her BA in science (physical chemistry) at Fayoum University, Egypt. she obtained a Master’s degree (material science and technology) in Minas Engineering (2019) at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oviedo under the supervision of Pedro Gorria and Maria Paz Fernández. Her research is focused on characterization of Nanoparticles like Ni by showing the relationship between the morphology, microstructure and magnetism of Ni NPs inserted on a porous amorphous matrix of activated carbon by combining several long and short-range order characterization techniques for a wide range of applications. These applications include medical, industrial, and environmental aspects.
Graciela Castellanos
Graciela Castellanos finished her technical degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Oviedo (Spain) in 2008 and received the best records award and first graduate honour. She has performed scientific work related to biomimetic functional surfaces. She started with one-year research at the Max Planck Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart (Germany), focused on the laboratory fabrication of micropatterned magnetic polymer surfaces, morphological characterization and the study of their switchable magnetic adhesion. Afterwards, she cooperated in the building-up phase of the new research group at the Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrücken (Germany) and collaborated with other research groups. Then she studied the effects of viscoelasticity on the adhesion of micropatterned epoxy surfaces. In 2011 she obtained a Master’s degree in Science and Chemical Technology at the National Distance Education University of Madrid (Spain).
She has worked in the public and private sectors. Some of her interests are using science to understand and help better our environment. She returned to Spain in 2022 and started working in the Department of Physics at the University of Oviedo, where she is currently collaborating on the MAGNES project under the supervision of Montserrat Rivas and José Carlos Martínez-García about nanomaterials and sensors for bio-applications.
Pablo Martínez Outomuro
Pablo is currently pursuing a PhD in Materials Science at the University of Oviedo. Graduate in Physics and Master in Advanced Physics specializing in Nanophysics and Quantum Materials.
He has experience working in programming, fabrication and characterization of magnetic nanomaterials and also he has experience in the working world as a teacher and handball referee.
Ability for public speaking, teamwork and error and pressure management.
Alba Sanz Prada
Alba Sanz Prada is currently finishing her degree in Physics at the University of Oviedo. Alba is working on the project: “Additive manufacturing of rotor parts by extrusion of magnetic material filaments” funded by the Instituto Universitario de Tecnología Industrial de Asturias (IUTA) under the supervision of Pablo Álvarez Alonso and Mª Paz Fernández García. Her main objective is to complete her academic training by completing the Master’s Degree in Materials Science at the University of Oviedo.
