Fitxa persona

Antonio Francés Monerris graduated from the University of Valencia in 2009. In 2011 he completed his Master's studies in Organic Chemistry at the Universitat Politècnica de València, where he did a research stay in a pharmaceutical company. That same year he began his PhD Thesis in computational chemistry at the Institute of Molecular Science (UV) under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Roca Sanjuán and Dr. Manuela Merchán in the QCEXVAL (Quantum Chemistry of the Excited State of Valencia) group. The Doctoral Thesis project studied the fundamental principles of chemical and photochemical damage to the nitrogenous bases of DNA through the use of sophisticated ab initio (from first principles) theoretical tools. In 2014, he did a stay at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) supervised by Prof. Roland Lindh, where he studied chemiluminescent reactions.

In 2017, Dr. Francés began his postdoctoral stage in Nancy (France) with Prof. Antonio Monari. He was recognized as a "High Level Researcher" by the regional government "Région Grand Est". In 2019 he won the APOSTD competitive postdoctoral contract funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, to work with Professors Antonio Monari (Nancy, France) and Iñaki Tuñón (Valencia). During nearly 3.5 years of post-doctorate in France, Dr. Francés conducted state-of-the-art studies related to excited state non-adiabatic dynamics and advanced QM/MM hybrid simulations of biological systems.

Antonio's return to Valencia was consolidated in 2021 with the granting of a Juan de la Cierva contract (reincorporation) financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, to investigate the Department of Physical Chemistry of the UV with Prof. Iñaki Tuñón. Later, he rejoined the QCEXVAL group as Assistant Professor. Dr. Francés is Principal Investigator of a national project that designs and studies light-induced anticancer therapy mechanisms based on new generation compounds.