Miguel García-Tecedor and Nagaraj Patil, researchers at IMDEA Energy, have been awarded the prestigious Ramón y Cajal contract by the Spanish Government. The Ramón y Cajal (R&C) programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation promotes the incorporation of researchers with outstanding scientific careers in R&D centres throughout Spain. The Ramón y Cajal contract includes an annual amount to co-finance the salary for five years and additional funding for research expenses.

Dr. Miguel García Tecedor (MSc. Applied Physics, 2013, PhD. Physics 2017, both at the Complutense University of Madrid, UCM) is a researcher in the Photoactivated Processes Unit at IMDEA Energy. Miguel developed his PhD, focused on the growth and characterisation of nanostructures and their possible applications, in the Physics of Electronic Nanomaterials group at UCM. In 2015, he joined the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), located in Kjeller, Norway, where he worked on the synthesis and characterisation of organic-inorganic compounds for solar cell passivation. In July 2017, Miguel started working at the Institute for Advanced Materials (INAM) at the Universitat Jaume I, where he worked on the development of materials and strategies for different (photo)electrochemical applications. In March 2021, Miguel joined IMDEA to continue his research focused on solar fuel generation. In 2023 he was awarded a Junior Leader La Caixa grant and the R3 certificate from the Spanish Research Agency.

Through the Ramón y Cajal grant, Miguel will continue to advance in the fabrication and characterisation of novel materials for the generation of solar fuels through photoelectrocatalytic routes, coupling chemical reactions of high interest.

Dr. Nagaraj Patil currently holds the position of Senior Researcher in the Electrochemical Processes Unit at IMDEA Energy. He obtained his MSc in Chemistry from India in 2012 and his PhD from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 2017. His PhD thesis, entitled “Multifunctional Polyelectrolytes Bearing Pendant Catechol/Quinone for Energy and Environmental Applications”, was part of the prestigious European Renaissance ITN project supervised by Professor Christine Jerome. Dr. Patil joined Institute IMDEA Energy in 2017 as a postdoctoral researcher. His work focuses on organic electrochemical energy storage, with special emphasis on an integrated approach combining synthetic polymer chemistry (redox-active polymers and conducting polymers) and applied electrochemical technologies (metal-polymer and all-polymer batteries).