Professor Guillermo Iglesias Salto, from the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2020 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding.

UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://sl.ugr.es/0aw0). The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) places the UGR in 268th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings, the UGR is outstanding in Documentation (ranked in the 36th in the world) or Food science technology (ranked 37th in the world), Mathematics and Computer Science (ranked among the top 76-100 in the world).

The UGR has 4 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in the Computer Science area. With regard to broader subject fields, the UGR is ranked in 45th position in the universities worldwide in the discipline of Engineering. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i) taking 36th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe. Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 18.02 million euros, and for H2020, 80 projects with total funding around 20.6 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The research activities of the group have focused on different lines, always regarding the physical properties of the solid/liquid interface and their implications in the characteristics of dispersed systems and their engineering applications.

Project description

Ours efforts have been devoted to the synthesis of nanoparticles of different chemical compositions, but always with controllable size, shape and surface functionalities. Additionally, the group has also tried to transfer their knowledge to industrial partners.

Specifically, under the project RyC-2014-16901, my interest has mainly dealt with two different lines regarding with the project “New technologies based on nanoparticles systems”, and “Biomedical Applications”. Specifically in two aspects:

1. Design and evaluation of nanoparticle-based drug transport vehicles, in which the inclusion of one or more magnetic cores permits control of the particle location, and approach to a specified target. A biodegradable polymer coating is added for loading and releasing the transported drugs.

2. Secondly, our interest has been invested in the preparation of (electric and magnetic) field-responsive fluids. These magnetorheological and electrorheological suspensions are capable of undergoing fast and reversible transition from moderately viscous Newtonian fluids to plastic or viscoelastic ones. This behavior makes them applicable as hydraulic fluids with variable viscosity in a wide range of applications, related to damping or motion transmission. The Spanish oil company Repsol has demonstrated its interest through a long-lasting financial agreement.

The analysis, characterization and manipulation of nanoparticles (NPs) is without doubt the step prior to the generation of new materials with a wide range of applications in areas such as medicine (diagnosis or treatment), biotechnology, electronics, energy storage, etc., Up to now, most applications have been limited to the use of suspensions of spherical particles, extensively studied in the theoretical and experimental field. However, in many situations, the geometry of the NPs is critical to improve these properties.

The scientific fields where the geometry is controlled, and often the non-sphericity, are of interest to grow as we advance in the knowledge of the materials and their synthesis techniques. There are even situations in which all phenomenology is based on the non-sphericity: just think of the phenomena of electro-orientation as the birefringence or the formation of phases liquid crystal, etc. This is particularly true in the area of so-called biomaterials, that is to say, in the development of systems for controlled release of drugs, tissue engineering and medical diagnostics. There also another scientific field in which recently, the use of magnetic nanoparticles has found an important therapeutic application. It is hyperthermia, consisting of the local heating induced by the particles when subjected to an oscillating magnetic field. Depending on the size and shape, this heating is produced by friction of the particles with the fluid, or by magnetic hysteresis, or even by the effect Néel (in the case of particles, superparamagnetic, therefore no hysteresis). Simply raise the temperature to about 45 ° C for 30 minutes to produce the death of the tumor cells. As a result, there occurs a heating of the particles even close to its melting temperature.

Research Area

Life Sciences (LIFE) and Physics (PHY)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Guillermo Iglesias Salto (iglesias@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)