The results of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions COFUND 2021 call for proposals were published on 7 July, with Spain being the country with the most funded projects. One of these grants has gone to Larissa Buedenbender from the QUIMOLMAT-PRONAMAR group.
On 11 October, the final decision on the people selected for the Margarita Salas modality of the Spanish university system re-qualification programmes for 2021-2023 was published. The University of A Coruña has obtained 7 of these grants, 2 of which have gone to our CICA centre to our colleagues Rafael Carballeira, from the GRICA group and Iago Neira, from QUIMOLMAT-SUPRA.
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) aim to enhance the creative and innovative potential of experienced researchers (researchers with a doctoral degree or who can demonstrate more than 4 years of full-time research experience), through individual projects, promoting international and intersectoral mobility in universities, research centres, research infrastructures, companies, SMEs and other socio-economic groups across Europe and beyond.
The Margarita Salas grants are aimed at young PhDs who have obtained their doctoral degree within the last two years at the latest. The duration of their stays is 2 or 3 years and they must join a university or research centre other than the one where they did their pre-doctoral training and obtained their doctorate. In the case of stays abroad, the last year must be spent at a Spanish university.
Dr. Larissa Buedenbender
Larissa Buedenbender has a degree in environmental science and a PhD in microbial natural product chemistry from Griffith University where she has also taught and demonstrated biology, applied mathematics, microbial ecology and chemistry to undergraduate students for more than 5 years. He did his postdoctoral work at GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel on the collection and characterisation of materials of biological origin. He is currently working at CICA under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Jiménez.
Dr. Rafael Carballeira
Rafael Carballeira holds a degree in Biology and a PhD from the Universidade da Coruña (UDC). He has developed his research and teaching activity related to fundamental and applied fields of botany and ecology of microalgae. His work focuses on understanding how the biology and ecology of microalgae is linked to essential biogeochemical processes in inland aquatic ecosystems and subaerial environments, with relevant contributions to taxonomy, biodiversity and (palaeo)limnology, as well as in applied fields such as (i) assessment and monitoring of the ecological status of wetlands and natural ecosystems; (ii) monitoring of potentially toxic cyanobacterial blooms in reservoirs and development of phytoplankton image analysis methods in relation to the WFD and the EU Habitats Directive; (iii) monitoring of subaerial algal biofilms (biofilms) in monumental built heritage in the context of SmartCity; and (iv) the use and validation of the use of the diatom test in the diagnosis of death by submersion.
Dr. Iago Neira
Iago Neira studied Chemistry at the University of A Coruña. After completing his master’s degree, in 2015 he joined Carlos Peinador and Marcos D. García’s group to work on metal-driven metallocycle self-assembly. In 2018, he spent 3 months on a research stay at the University of Miami under the supervision of Prof. Angel E. Kaifer working with cucurbituryl chemistry. He worked in 2019 with Prof. Marco Lucarini at Università di Bologna on supramolecular radicals and at Trinity University (USA) and in 2020 for a short stay supervised by Prof. Adam Urbach on peptide chemistry. He completed his thesis in 2022 focusing on the self-assembly of molecular machines using receptor-substrate chemistry that responds to external stimuli such as temperature, pH or electric current. In 2023 he will join Alberto Credi’s group at the Center for Light Activated Nanostructures (CLAN) in Bologna as a Margarita Salas researcher, developing new supramolecular devices that respond to the external stimulus of photochemistry.