Rafael Muñoz-Espí is an Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Valencia. He graduated in Chemistry at this university (Licentiate Degree in 2001). He was awarded a postgraduate fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Foundation “La Caixa” to conduct his doctoral studies in Germany. From 2002 to 2006 he worked under the supervision of Prof. Gerhard Wegner at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz, and he received his doctoral degree in 2006 from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

In 2007, he moved to the USA as a Postdoctoral Associate in the group of Prof. Benjamin Chu at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he worked for two years, with frequent stays at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Muñoz-Espí was Group Leader of the team "Polymer/Inorganic Hybrid Colloids" at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, in the Department of Physical Chemistry of Polymers headed by Prof. Katharina Landfester. During this time, he was responsible for several projects and industrial contracts at national (German) and international level.

In September 2015, Dr. Muñoz-Espí joined the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia (ICMUV) as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Fellow. Since May 2021, he has been an Associate Professor at this institution.

Dr. Muñoz-Espí has coauthored more than 100 scientific peer-reviewed publications in high-ranking international journals and 6 book chapters. He acts periodically as a reviewer for scientific agencies and for several chemistry and materials science journals. His current research interests include mineralization processes, the synthesis of polymeric and hybrid nanoparticles, crystallization in colloidal systems, and the study of the interaction of polymers with inorganic matter. In the last years, he has conducted research and teaching stays as a visiting professor/scientist at the Bar-Ilan University (Israel, 2016), the University of Padova (Italy, 2018), and the Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (Ecuador, 2018).

In addition to chemistry, he is interested in linguistics. He holds a B.A. in Catalan Language from the University of Andorra (2015) and a B.A. in Catalan Language and Literature from the Open University of Catalonia (2016). He has studied the morphological and semantic specificity of the Andorran neology (see here).

Coming from a background of analytical chemistry, my research has focused on developing vibrational spectroscopic techniques to address a wide range of bioanalytical problems spanning the clinical and biological fields. Clinical Spectroscopy is a multidisciplinary field that involves research in chemistry, optics, and statistics to provide applications in the biomedical context. I have been very lucky to work in different labs across Europe and Australia, including France (1.5 years), Germany (0.5 years), Australia (4.5 years) and Ireland (2 years). I have finally settled in the University of Valencia with a Ramon y Cajal grant, where I am establishing myself as an independent researcher.

 My contribution to the field of vibrational spectroscopy has advanced knowledge in 4 central themes:
i) Sample processing for IR analysis: Improving clinical spectroscopy methods by using sample pretreatment techniques. 
ii) Chemometrics and data fusion: Application of novel chemometric datamining algorithms. Development of methods for fusing data from different modalities, including infrared (IR) and Mass Spectrometry and the multimodal imaging of IR and Raman.
ii) Infrared and Raman micro- and nano- imaging. Images of cells and tissues using Raman and IR. Use of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) coupled with IR and Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (TERS).
iv) Translational research. Development of methods for biofluid analysis, and most notably diagnosis of Malaria in developing countries and quantification of clinical parameters for bio-fluids at the hospital level and in the point-of-care context. Field trials in Thailand using portable instrumentation.

Scientific Output:  I have authored more than 60 journal articles and 2 chapters in indexed scientific journals: 55% as the first or corresponding author, 66% of the articles published in the first Quartile (Q1) of their respective field. These works have been cited 1200 times (Jan,2020); h-index is 23; [Google Scholar] and I obtained a granted US patent. As a PI, my projects have obtained more than 500K EUR in funding from institutions in Europe, Australia and Asia.