Traditional materials and devices present different limitations. For example, the robots used nowadays are rigid and, in most cases, heavy and noisy, which limits their applicability due to safety and adaptability issues. Nowadays, new soft robots are emerging based on different soft materials. One kind of soft materials are electro-chemo-mechanical materials such as conducting polymers that can change their composition and properties (such as volume, colour, stored charge, stored chemical content, porosity,…) in a reversible way. This is allowing the development of new devices with new possibilities. Thus, understanding the basic electro-chemo-mechanical processes involved in these materials is key to further develop the already existing applications and explore new ones.
The dissertation, defended in 2015, was awarded with the ‘best Ph.D. dissertation of the university’ award and the ‘Antonio Aldaz’ award to the best PhD dissertation given by the Electrochemistry group from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. After that I continued working at Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, developing new projects until 2017 when I moved to Linköping University, first as postdoctoral fellow, then postdoc, principal research engineer and now that I became research fellow.
During all these years I have learnt and explored concepts and ideas from many different fields such as electronics, robotics, materials science or electrochemistry which has given me a multidisciplinary background.
Background
I received a degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (Spain) in 2009. There, I became curious about research and started to participate in a European funded project to develop anthropomorphic robots. Later, I joined the Laboratory for Electrochemistry and Intelligent Materials from the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, where I pursued my Ph.D. in the field of biomimetic electrochemical materials and actuators within the program “Electrochemistry. Science and Technology”.The dissertation, defended in 2015, was awarded with the ‘best Ph.D. dissertation of the university’ award and the ‘Antonio Aldaz’ award to the best PhD dissertation given by the Electrochemistry group from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. After that I continued working at Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, developing new projects until 2017 when I moved to Linköping University, first as postdoctoral fellow, then postdoc, principal research engineer and now that I became research fellow.
During all these years I have learnt and explored concepts and ideas from many different fields such as electronics, robotics, materials science or electrochemistry which has given me a multidisciplinary background.
