Manuel Pernia Leal

After completion of my BSc in Chemistry at the Univ. of Seville in 2004, I joined immediately the group of Dr. Khiar and Prof. I. Fernández at the “Instituto de Investigaciones Químicas (IIQ-CSIC) and the University of Seville (funded by a predoctoral grant). During the first year of my PhD Thesis, I worked on the field of asymmetric catalysis, the main research project line of the group. However my research project was going well by publishing 2 research articles (Org. Lett. and Org. Biomol. Chem.), we decided to change my PhD project to the nascent Nanotechnology field in the frame of a multidisciplinary research line started in the group. This project was carried out in collaboration with the Mioskowski's group from the Univ. of Strasbourg (PhD student visitor during 2005-2007), one of the leading group in the field carbon-based nanomaterials. In this manner, I took responsibility to initiate a new research line in Dr. Khiar and Prof. Fernández's group being the first PhD student in their research group to deal with the synthesis of biocompatible nanomaterials. This project was fruitfully achieved with the result of 7 publications such as ACS Nano, Nanoscale, Chem. Comm, Chem. Eur. J. among others and 2 patents. In June 2009, I obtained my PhD in chemistry with honors (Cum Laude) by the Univ. Seville. In July 2009, I performed my first postdoctoral stay in the Centre for Systems Chemistry at the Univ. of Groningen under the supervision of Prof. S. Otto. During that time, my research was focused on surface-functionalized gold nanoparticles that could potentially recognize DNA sequences through dynamic combinatorial chemistry. This achievement has been recently published in Langmuir. In July 2010, I was awarded with a postdoctoral grant in Dr. Manna group under the guidance of Dr. Pellegrino at the Italian Institute of Technology (Genoa-Italy). There, I developed hybrid nanosystems that respond to external stimuli as pH and temperature for drug delivery and biosensing. Those projects gave 6 high impact factor publications (ACS Nano, NanoLett., Adv. Mat., Chem. Mat., ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. and Langmuir), and 2 more publications which are under-revision. In 2013, I joined to the Research Centre Bionand in Malaga as a researcher working on synthesis of hybrid nanomaterials with potential application in cancer diagnostics and treatment, where I was the principal investigator of 2 projects: one co-funded by the Marie Curie Program FP7 in collaboration with the Univ. of Glasgow and another funded by the Andalusian Government. In April 2016, I was awarded with a 4 year-contract at the U. Seville. In summary, I have published 21 papers in international journals with high impact factor (average: 7.4) and 2 pending patents. These publications with high impact factor > 12 including journals as Nano Lett., Adv. Mat. or ACS Nano (x2) and IF> 7 as Biomaterials, Nanoscale (x3), NanoResearch or Chem. Mat. During my scientific career, I was awarded with different competitive grants (pre- and post-doctorates), and I have also participated in national and international research projects, and supervised master, PhD students and postdocs. Moreover, I have presented my scientific work in several reviewed-before-acceptance international conferences. The increasing progress of my research career is reflected in my publication track record in highly impact factor journals and the capacity to get national and international fundings as principal investigator.