Jesús Santamaría, professor at the University of Zaragoza and researcher at the IIS Aragón, elected foreign member of the Istituto Lombardo

Professor Jesús Santamaría, professor of Chemical Engineering from Zaragoza's University, has been elected foreign member of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Science et Lettere, in its division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Chemistry section. This institution was originally founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797, as the National Institute of the Cisalpine Republic, in charge of collecting discoveries and perfect the arts and sciences, following the model of the Institut de France. Napoleon himself appointed the first members of the Istituto and its first president, Alessandro Volta.

Today the Istituto Lombardo is an organization dependent on the Italian Ministry of Culture based in the Brera Palace, and has maintained its founding task of cContribute to “matters related to education and public welfare. It currently develops an extensive program of activities, including research support in the areas of action of the institution, numerous events and public conferences, as well as its own publications and the management of its famous archive and library.

Among the members who have belonged to the Istituto Lombardo include, in addition to Napoleon and Volta himself, the poet Vincenzo Monti, the writer and politician Alessandro Manzoni, the philosopher Carlo Cattaneo and the clergyman Achille Ratti, future Pope Pius XI, as well as several Nobel Prize winners: Camillo Golgi (Medicine), Giosuè Carducci (Literature), Giulio Natta (Chemistry) and Eugenio Montale (Literature).

370 articles published, 35 supervised doctoral theses, 26 patents and participation in 18 European projects, including two of the prestigious Advanced Grants of the European Research Council (ERC), They endorse Santamaría's long and profuse career in the academic and scientific field. Santamaría is the Principal Investigator of the NFP (Nanostructured Films and Particles) research group, and belongs to the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA), CSIC-UNIZAR joint center, Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón), and the Biomedical Research Network Center for Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN).

His current research topics include development of new methods for the synthesis of nanomaterials, and applications of synthesized materials in medicine, photoassisted catalysis, microwave catalysis, sensing through molecular recognition and nanosecurity. Santamaría has been director of the Samca Chair of Nanotechnology, deputy director of Unizar Nanoscience Institute of Aragon and magazine editor Chemical Engineering Journal. He has carried out postdoctoral research stays in the University of Notre Dame and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).), both in the United States.

Source: Scientific Culture Unit, University of Zaragoza.