Asunción Fernández

Biography

Born May 1958 in Vigo, Spain, Prof. Asunción Fernández graduated in Chemistry at the University of Cádiz (Spain) (1980) and in Physics at UNED (Spanish Open University) (1984). She carried out her PhD work at “Max-Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie” in Mülheim a.d. Ruhr (Germany) obtaining the Dr. rer. nat. degree at the University of Dortmund (Germany) in June 1983 on the subject of “photocatalytic H2 production from water solutions”. In 1983 she started a postdoc stay at the Univ. of Seville and in 1987 she joined as tenured scientist the Materials Science Institute of Seville (ICMS, Spain), a mix-center of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the Univ. Seville. She became research scientist in 1997 and full Professor of CSIC in 2002. She has leaded the research group "Nanostructured Materials and Microstructure - NanoMatMicro" since 1991 and is the head scientist of the Electron microscopy laboratories of  ICMS and the CicCartuja center since 1996. She has been the director of the ICMS from July 2001 to November 2009. In 2012 she stablished at the ICMS the Laboratory for Nanoscopies and Spectroscopies LANE, supported by the regional REGPOT program of the European Commission. From October 2013 to March 2014 has been “Academic Guest” at the EMPA laboratories (Swittzerland).

Research Interest

Her research activities have been mainly focused on the physical-chemical study of nanomaterials, aiming to control the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanostructured thin films; as well as, to apply microstructural characterization techniques for the study of materials in the nano-scale. In particular she worked in the fields of: Semiconductor photocatalysis, surface chemistry, hydrogen storage and magnetron sputtering deposition of coatings. Actually she is investigating novel methodologies for fabrication of porous thin films by plasma assisted deposition techniques, and the development of catalytic coatings for hydrogen generation/storage and its catalytic combustion.