Dr. Mariam Barawi and Dr. Charles-Alexis Asselineau, researchers at IMDEA Energía, have been awarded the prestigious Ramón y Cajal contract by the Spanish Government. The Ramón y Cajal (RyC) program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation promotes the incorporation of researchers with outstanding scientific careers in R&D centers 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.

Mariam Barawi started her scientific career at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she obtained her PhD with Cum Laude mention in 2015. During the following two years she spent a postdoctoral stay at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Lecce, Italy. She joined IMDEA Energy in 2017, where she was responsible for the assembly, tuning and leadership of the photoelectrochemistry line for conversion with solar energy.

During this time, Mariam Barawi has obtained the Juan de la Cierva Training and Juan de la Cierva Incorporation grants, and has been Principal Investigator of two national plan projects, one of them ongoing, which has allowed her to develop her own lines of research. On the other hand, she has supervised several undergraduate and master students and completed the direction of a doctoral thesis, in addition to others in progress. Recently, she has obtained the I3 Researcher certification that has allowed her to obtain a project as a Research Consolidation PI. She is currently author of more than 40 publications in scientific journals with more than 2000 citations and an H index of 24.

Mariam will complete the R&C program obtained, entitled: “Photoelectrochemical generation of solar fuels and added-value chemicals through advanced hybrid” at IMDEA Energy, working on the development of different inorganic-organic hybrid systems for use in photoelectrochemical cells for solar energy conversion.

For his part, Dr. Charles-Alexis Asselineau Completed his PhD on Optical Properties of Materials Used in High Temperature Industrial Applications at the Australian National University (ANU) as number 1 in his class of 2017.

Following his PhD he continued at ANU to further develop Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) research for government and private sector funded projects in collaboration with other countries and research centers. Charles-Alexis is a member of the U.S.-Australian Heliocon consortium in which he collaborates with researchers in the solar PV field to understand the complex optics of bifacial solar array tracking. In addition, it has initiated research on heat and electricity storage.

In 2021, he was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission and returned to Europe to start a postdoctoral research position in the High Temperature Processes Unit at IMDEA Energy.

Through the Ramón y Cajal grant, Asselineau will continue to advance the development of advanced light-matter interaction models to understand and predict the optical behavior of complex geometries with the aim of proposing innovations for the decarbonization of industrial processes relevant to the production of steel, cement, ceramics, chemicals or electricity and energy storage.