CIC energiGUNE
CIC energiGUNE is a BRTA research center based in the Basque Country, launched in 2011 as a strategic initiative of the Basque Government with support from the Provincial Council of Álava and the Basque Energy Agency. The center hosts over 200 researchers working on advanced materials and devices for electrochemical and thermal energy storage, energy conversion, and hydrogen technologies. CIC energiGUNE combines fundamental and applied research with strong industrial collaboration, coordinating multiple European projects and contributing to over 125 scientific publications and 25 patents each year. Its mission includes cutting-edge research, technology transfer, and the training of young scientists to address energy challenges and promote sustainable development.
The team
Max Garcia Melchor
Group leaderDr. Max García-Melchor joined CIC energiGUNE in September 2024 as an Ikerbasque Professor, where he leads the Atomistic and Molecular Modelling for Catalysis group. His research focuses on leveraging advanced computational methods and artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of catalytic materials for sustainable chemical and fuel production.
Before his current role, Dr. García-Melchor was an Associate Professor in Chemical Energy Systems at the School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin (2016-2024), and a Principal Investigator at the Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (AMBER) Centre. He earned his PhD in Chemistry at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2012, followed by postdoctoral research at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (2012-2014) and Stanford University (2014-2016).
Dídac Armand Fenoll
ResearcherHe obtained his PhD in Chemistry (2024) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). His PhD research was focused on the computational characterization of photonic and electrocatalytic materials using first principles, quantum chemistry methods. He has worked with low-dimensional semiconductor material models, for which the effect of ligand passivation and shell growth on the electronic structure was assessed in detail. His research into electrochemistry involved the screening of hydrogen evolution reactions with monometallic, bimetallic and core-shell electrocatalysts. Dídac has also worked in computational homogeneous catalysis, particularly, concerning olefin metathesis with organometallic catalysts.
In 2025, Dídac joined the Atomistic and Molecular Modelling for Catalysis group, led by Ikerbasque Professor Dr. Max García-Melchor, at CIC energiGUNE (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain). His current research focuses on green energy and the implementation of machine learning and cheminformatic tools aimed at the high-throughput screening of liquid organic hydrogen carriers for sustainable hydrogen storage.
Pablo Castro
ReseacherHe obtained his BSc in Chemistry in 2016, and his MSc in chemical sciences in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Fernando Mendizábal at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Chile, where he used ab initio methods to describe the reactivity and the role of non-covalent interactions in Phthalocyanine-based materials.
In 2021, he joined Prof. Konstantin Neyman and Dr. Albert Bruix’s group at the University of Barcelona for his PhD, focusing on the study of nanostructured catalysts supported on cerium oxide surfaces, ranging from metal particles to thin films. After his PhD, Pablo joined the Atomistic and Molecular Modelling for Catalysis group led by Dr. Max García-Melchor at CIC energiGUNE.