Tag Archives: King Jaime I Prize

Professor Fernando Martín receives the King Jaime I Award for Basic Research

Posted on November 1, 2017 by beatriz.martin

Fernando Martín, Professor of the Department of Chemistry of the Faculty of Sciences of the UAM, received on October 30 the King Jaime I Prize for Basic Research in a ceremony held in Valencia, in the Hall of Columns of the Lonja of Merchants.

The event was chaired by His Majesty Queen Letizia and was attended by the President of the Generalitat Valenciana, the Mayor of Valencia and the President of the Valencian Foundation for Advanced Studies. The ceremony was attended on behalf of the UAM by its Rector, Rafael Garesse, the dean of the Faculty of Sciences, José Mª Carrascosa, the Director of the Department of Chemistry, Otilia Mó, and Professor Manuel Yáñez who was the Director of the Doctoral thesis by Fernando Martín.

The jury, chaired by Roger Kornberg, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006, recognized the merits of Fernando Martín in “the foundation of the field of theoretical attochemistry, which makes it possible to calculate the movement of electrons and, therefore, the prediction of chemical reactions”. This discipline, consolidated during the last years, has opened the way to a new chemistry in which the obtaining of new compounds would be possible from reactions that do not follow the conventional patterns. The research of Professor Fernando Martín has a strong multidisciplinary character, which has led him to relevant discoveries in various areas: lasers physics, physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, atomic and molecular physics, surface physics, computational modelling, organic and inorganic chemistry , physics of accelerators and biophysics.

With more than 400 international publications, Professor Fernando Martín has been invited as a lecturer in the main forums of his research area, and has attracted important funding from the European Union, among others, an ERC Advanced Grant project. This award is added to others previously obtained as the King Juan Carlos I Research Prize (2001), or the Spanish Society of Chemistry in Physical Chemistry Prize (2010).

For more information:

See the jury’s decision and interview to the awardee here: http://www.fprj.es/es/investigacion-basica/fernando-martin-garcia
Award ceremoy’s gallery: http://www.fprj.es/es/galer%C3%ADa/
Full retransmission of the ceremony:
Media appearances: https://www.xchem.uam.es/xchem/?p=3519

Posted in News | Tagged Attochemistry, ERC Advanced Grant, EU funded, King Jaime I Prize | Leave a comment

Birth of the ultrafast chemistry: Attochemistry

Posted on July 18, 2017 by beatriz.martin

Editor: Kathy/Gloria JEM: Diane
RTP: Rebecca Horseman

The publication of a review on the foundations of a new scientific discipline that pursues to control the movement of electrons in molecules using attosecond methodologies (see Chem. Rev., 2017, 117 (16), pp 10760–10825, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00453), has appeared, among others, in the following media:

Institutional web sites (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid) scientific news Agencies (SINC, Madrimasd), radio promammes (Radio Euskadi, La mecanica del caracol) various scientific blogs and digital media (Noticias Informativos Telecinco, Innovaticias, Innovaspain, Noticias Cuatro, NewTech, Noticias de la Ciencia, Madrid Norte, Te interesa, Ecodiario, La informacion).

Listen to it!:

Appearance in the radio program “La mecanica del Caracol”, on July 14 2017, at Radio Euskadi.
http://www.ivoox.com/nace-attoquimica-quimica-ultrarrapida-trastornos-mentales-audios-mp3_rf_19813851_1.html
Interview to Prof. Martin at the Spanish radio program “España Vuelta y Vuelta”, on July 13, 2017, at RNE.

Posted in Press | Tagged Attochemistry, King Jaime I Prize, ultrafast electron dynamics | Leave a comment

Fernando Martín, King Jaime I Prize in Basic Research

Posted on June 8, 2017 by beatriz.martin

Fernando Martín, Full Professor at the Chemistry Department of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and researcher at IMDEA-Nanociencia and IFIMAC Condensed Matter Physics Center, has been awarded the King Jaime I Prize in Basic Research in its 2017 edition. The jury has recognized his role in the establishment of the theoretical foundations of attochemistry. This emerging scientific field aims at observing and manipulating the electronic motion in atoms and molecules in their natural time scale, the attosecond (10^-18 seconds), so as to control the chemical properties of substances and modify their natural behaviour. Although the first steps in this new scientific field date back only a decade ago, it is expected to become a multidisciplinary tool with numerous applications in chemistry, physics or biology, for example, to control the evolution of a chemical reaction, obtain images of charge transfer processes in individual molecules or influence the biological response to radiation, whether desired or undesired.

The demonstration that attosecond science can have a large impact in chemistry came in 2014, when, with the help of sophisticated computational modelling, it was shown (Science 346, 336) that experiments in which the amino acid phenylalanine is irradiated with attosecond laser pulses are indeed able to monitor the movement of electrons, and hence to modify the properties and chemical behaviour of the molecule.

According to the award-winning, the next steps in this field point to the use of attosecond techniques to prevent undesired chemical reactions, as those biological processes leading to adverse effects or, conversely, to induce chemical reactions that are currently impossible, which could lead to the production of new substances or materials. According to a recent article (Chemical Reviews, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00453), the measurement and control of electronic motion in complex molecular structures is a formidable challenge that must be tackled in a multidisciplinary way, including intensive theoretical modelling in supercomputers, and may have a strong impact In chemistry for years to come.

King Jaime I Prizes

The Rey Jaime I Award recognizes researchers whose work is highly significant and has been developed for the most part in Spain. Throughout its 28 editions, it has been awarded to more than 100 researchers, the most important figures of the scientific, technological and entrepreneurial world of Spain. Many of the winners have received, during their careers, other relevant national and international awards.

Fernando Martín was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1961. He graduated in Chemistry in 1984 and Physics in 1986 at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He received his Ph.D. at the same university in 1986. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the University of Bordeaux (1988), the Université de Paris VI (1989–1990), and the Univesity of Chicago (1995–1996). He has been Full Profesor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 2005. He obtained the national research price Rey Juan Carlos I on 2000 and the prize of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry in 2010. He is currently Chair of the “Cátedra UAM-Fujitsu” on Scientific Computing and Big Data.

His research focuses on the theoretical modelling of photoexcitation and photoionization of atomic and molecular systems induced by synchrotron radiation and ultrashort laser pulses, as well as that of complex molecular systems, isolated or deposited on surfaces. He has published almost 400 articles, and since 2011, he has been the recipient of an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council to lead a project focused on the development of computational tools for the study of processes that occur in the femto- and atto-second timescales (XCHEM).

In the last years, his research group (https://campusys.qui.uam.es/) has attracted significant funding from the European Union (projects ERC-AdG- 290853 XCHEM, COST Action CM0702, MCA-ITN- 264951 CORINF y MSCA-EJD-642294 TCCM, MCA-RIG- 268284 ATTOTREND) and national programs funded through MICINN, MINECO and the AEI (projects FIS-2016-77889-R, FIS-2013-42002-R, FIS-2010-15127 and PIM2010EEC-00751-ERA-Chemistry), which has allowed him to establish what is perhaps the reference research group in Europe in the area of “Theoretical Attochemistry”.