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).

Dr. Daniel Tordera is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physical Chemistry and the Molecular Science Institute (ICMol) of the University of Valencia.

He received his PhD in Nanotechnology at the University of Valencia in 2014, where he studied light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), an ionic organic electronic system for light emission. His PhD received the Outstanding Doctorate Award by the University of Valencia and the Nanomatmol Award to the best PhD at a National level by the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. His work elucidated the operational mechanism of LECs and lead to the fabrication of stable, fast, efficient and bright devices. As a step forward, he started his own company, Lec-Val Lighting, a spin-off created to commercialize the results of his PhD. The company was chosen as one of the most innovative ideas by the Repsol Entrepreneurship Fund. Subsequently, he spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, working in the field of optics and plasmonics for energy and sensing applications. In 2017, he joined Holst Centre at TNO as a Senior Researcher where he led the development on near infrared photodetectors, managing an interdisciplinary team of research staff and engineers and working in projects for world leading high-tech and consumer electronics companies. He also led the business development of his research line, including strategy roadmap and intellectual property portfolio. He worked in the fields of biometrics and healthcare and made achievements including the first noncontact reflective large-area vein pattern imager based on organic photodetectors, a near-infrared photodetector array for biomedical applications and a large-area fingerprint array complying with the FBI standards. Since Nov. 2020, Dr. Tordera is at the University of Valencia, where he focuses on the topics of perovskite photodetectors and LEDs, OLEDs and LECs, with works such as the first transparent LEC and the development of a semitransparent near-infrared perovskite photodetector, amongst others.

Dr. Tordera has published 64 papers and 1 book chapter (almost all Q1). His work has been cited over 3000 times (h-index 32). He is an inventor of 4 patents. His work has been presented at 40 international conferences (22 author, 29 co-author). He has been the principal investigator of 2 projects and has participated in 12 projects. He has been the research manager of multiple contracts with private companies (NDA-protected). He has been an evaluator for the European Innovation Council (EIC) at the European Comission, the Austrian Science Fund and the Latvian Council of Science. He has been a reviewer for the major editorial groups (Wiley, ACS, RSC, Springer Nature, etc.). He has supervised 3 BSc, 4 MSc and 1 PhD students and he is currently co-supervising 3 PhD candidates. He has received the European Materials Research Society Spring Meeting Young Scientist Award in 2012, the Society of Information Display Distinguished Paper Award in 2019, selected as Journal of Materials Chemistry C Emerging Investigator in 2022 and the XVIII Scientific Technical Award Ciutat d’Algemesí in 2023, amongst others. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara and he has carried out stays at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source in Ithaca and the Columbia University in New York. He has been a guest lecturer at the ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, where he applied his entrepreneurship experience to teach business development to multidisciplinary science MSc students. 

At the University of Valencia, he is teaching Physical Chemistry courses at the Faculties of Chemistry and Farmacy. Students have praised his innovative teaching by granting him one of the highest ratings in his Department. Since 2022 he is the Educational Innovation Coordinator of the Faculty of Chemistry. He has published 3 educational innovation articles, presented his work in 9 conferences, and he participates in a project focused on active teaching methodologies. He has led a university-wide innovative project to promote science interdisciplinarity amongst the students at the University and he has been an organizer in the national Chemistry Education conference (Indoquim). He participates in the Chemistry Olympics and in Lab activities to promote Chemistry for high school students.