Prof. Jenny Nelson, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London (UK), gets one of the JAE Chair grants from CSIC and will be chairholder of the DOMMINO project, coordinated by Prof. Mariano Campoy-Quiles at ICMAB-CSIC.
The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and the Fundación General CSIC (FGCSIC) have announced the ex aequo winners of the first edition of the JAE Chairs pilot program. The selected initiatives are the DOMMINO project, focused on the design and optimization of molecular materials for innovative energy solutions, and the ALLCRYO project, aimed at cutting-edge techniques for the structural characterization of heterogeneous biological samples.
With an endowment of up to 600,000 euros, the grant involves the proposal and development of a research project that generates lasting impact on the Spanish public system of science, technology and innovation, acting as a catalyst for emerging and disruptive science. The objective of JAE Chairs, the first initiative of scientific chairs at the CSIC, a body under the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, is to attract world-class researchers to promote excellence and scientific-technical impact in the organization.
DOMMINO (Design and Optimisation of Molecular Materials for Innovative Energy Solutions) targets the basic science of electronic materials that can help accelerate the energy transition. Identifying molecular semiconductors as designer materials with rapid design and scale-up potential as well as tuneable properties, the project aims to discover the design rules that will improve device performance in three critical areas. These are, improved thermoelectric harvesting of waste heat, improved energy efficiency of low power electronic devices, and improved utilisation of solar radiation for photovoltaic conversion. DOMMINO’s approach is to combine the expertise of the CSIC PI in experimental and high-throughput exploration with the Chair’s in innovative materials modelling, to discover the relationships that control the electronic, thermal and doping behaviour of target materials and so to develop criteria for improved materials. The findings stand to benefit development of thermoelectric, photovoltaic and low-power electronics technology and attract industrial interest.
Prof. Nelson has established a world-leading reputation in the fundamental physics, chemistry and materials science of novel electronic materials for application to solar energy conversion and related technology. Her expertise spans the physics of solar cells and other semiconductor devices; structure-property (optical, electrical, electrochemical and spin) relationships of molecular semiconductors; multiscale modelling of novel electronic materials; physics and chemistry of photocatalytic, photochemical and electrochemical energy conversion; and analysis of the mitigation potential of energy technologies.
The chair of the ALLCRYO project is the researcher Eva Nogales de la Morena, from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. The project is coordinated by the researcher of the National Biotechnology Centre (CNB-CSIC), José María Valpuesta.
This project will focus on improving crucial aspects of electron cryomicroscopy, which has become a revolutionary and essential technique in structural biology, thanks to advances in sample preparation, data acquisition and processing that now routinely allow high-resolution structural description of many macromolecular complexes.
