Samuel Sánchez, ICREA research professor at the BIST centre IBEC, has received a 2022 Research Excellence Award from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. The awards ceremony took place on October 18 at the Faculty of Chemistry at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry was created in 1903 as the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and Chemistry, and has been operating independently since 1980. It currently has more than 5000 members, positioning it as the largest scientific society in Spain by membership (followed by the physics and mathematics branches), and the third-largest society in Europe behind Germany and the Netherlands.
The RSEQ awards “should be seen as the most important awards in chemistry of Spain, as the awards that the chemistry community gives to their colleagues”, explains RSEQ President and Group Leader at the BIST centre ICIQ, Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren.
Samuel Sánchez holds a doctorate in Chemistry from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and, prior to his work at IBEC, worked at the Max Planck and Leibniz Institutes in Germany and in Japan. He has received numerous awards for his pioneering work with nanobots, as well as some of the most competitive projects at the national and European level, such as four ERC Grants, including the Consolidator Grant that he currently holds. He has published more than 150 papers, has been invited to present at more than 130 conferences, and has 7 patents, one of them licensed as a spin-off in which he is co-founder.
Dr. Aitziber López Cortajarena, from CIC biomaGUNE; Dr. Carlos Martí Gastaldo, from ICMol-Universidad of Valencia; and Dr. Iván Mora Seró, from the Universidad Jaime I, were the other recipients of the 2022 Research Excellence Awards.
Three additional awards were also presented at the ceremony: the RSEQ Medal, the Award for Distinguished Research Careers, and the Award for Educational and Outreach work in Pre-University Studies. All those who have held an RSEQ membership for more than forty-five years were also recognised with the “Chemistry Europe Fellows Class of 2020-2021″ distinction.
In this year’s awards ceremony, the presidential table was formed by Dr. Jesús Sanmartín, Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The awards were presented by the General Secretary of RSEQ, Dr. Sonsoles Martín Santamaría.
A video recording of the awards ceremony can be viewed here.
Learn more:
IBEC newspiece
RSEQ awards publication