ICN2
Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
ICN2 is a non-profit international research institute close to Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). It is dedicated to developing knowledge, materials and devices in the wide field of health, energy, environment and the technologies of computers and communications. Its experience is in the nanoscale where new properties and interactions and ways of using them in daily life are constantly being discovered. Amongst its goals is reuniting scientific personnel with different competencies in the look for better science, better teaching and a higher impact on society, at the same time it explores new ways of interacting with local and global industries. The institute was credited as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence in 2014, a recognition renewed in 2018 and 2023 by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for another 4 years.
The team
María Escudero Escribano
ICREA ProfessorShe is an ICREA Professor at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology ICN2), where she leads the NanoElectrocatalysis and Sustainable Chemistry (NanoESC) Group. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2011) and carried out her postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Denmark and Stanford University.
She started her independent career in 2017 as a Tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. She joined ICN2 as an ICREA Professor in 2022. María is passionate about combining electrochemistry, materials engineering and in situ spectroscopy and microscopy characterisation for applications in renewable energy conversion and storage. She was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022 and has received numerous awards in recognition of her groundbreaking research. These awards include the Gold Medal of the European Young Chemist Award 2016, the Princess of Girona Scientific Research Award 2018, the Electrochemical Society Energy Technology Division Young Investigator Award 2018, the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry Young Researchers Award 2019, the Clara Immerwahr Award 2019, and the Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship 2021.
Gabriel Floriano
Postdoc researcherHe obtained his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Campinas in 2024. He started working with electrochemistry as an undergrad intern at the Brazilian Nanotechnology National Laboratory (LNNano) in 2018, where he worked with microfluidic electrochemical sensors. His PhD was focused on in-situ investigations of the activity of copper-based materials for electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia, under the supervision of Prof. Raphael Nagao. During his PhD, Gabriel spent one year at the University of Michigan – USA, where he characterized copper oxide-derived electrocatalysts with in-situ Raman spectroscopy, under the supervision of Prof. Nirala Singh. He is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) under the supervision of Prof. María Escudero Escribano, and his project is focused on in-situ investigation of urea synthesis from the co-reduction of nitrate and carbonate.
Camilo Mesa Zamora
Postdoc researcherHe completed his M.Sc. in Materials at the University of Bologna and a PhD at the Imperial College London (2019), obtaining the first prize for both. Until 2023, Camilo held a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Advanced Materials (INAM–UJI), where he studied the limiting kinetic and mechanistic factors of (photo)electrocatalytic reactions via in-situ techniques. He has co-authored >35 papers including JACS and Nature Chemistry, with over 1700 citations.
He holds a senior postdoctoral position in the NanoESC Group, focusing on in-situ characterization of electrocatalysts for co-electrolysis.