We would like to congratulate Marta García Castrillo for obtaining his PhDs in Project Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (EHU).

On May 14 she made a brilliant defense of her thesis titled “Engineering of Multifunctional Materials from Biobased Polymers for Environmentally Relevant Applications”. The thesis was coordinated by Erlantz Lizundia.

We would like to congratulate Vera Macedo for obtaining his PhDs in Materials Science and Technology from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

We would like to congratulate James Rosero for obtaining his PhDs in Materials Science and Technology from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

BCMaterials is pleased to welcome two new members to its research team: Sara Martín Iglesias, a postdoctoral researcher in the Active and Smart Materials research line, and Stefano Lunghi, a predoctoral researcher in the field of Micro and Nano-structured Materials.

Scientific staff at BCMaterials are developing next-generation nanomaterials combined with naturally sourced polymer membranes for water decontamination and reuse. These advanced materials not only remove emerging contaminants—such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria—and heavy metals, including arsenic, but also enable the recovery of high-value critical elements for industry, such as rare earth elements, cobalt, and lithium.

The new year has brought BCMaterials the arrival of three new young scientists to our staff. They are the pre-doctoral researchers Karen Cano and Mikel Russo, along with the post-doctoral researcher Jules Marcone. They will contribute from different scientific backgrounds to materials science development for areas like active and smart materials, nanostructured materials and computational materials science.

Karen Cano

We would like to congratulate María Calles García for obtaining her PhDs in Materials Science and Technology from the UPV/EHU.

On December 4 made a brilliant defense of her thesis titled ‘Chelating Metal-Organic Frameworks and Their Polymer-Composites For Water Remediation’. The thesis was directed by Viktor Petrenko and Roberto Fernández de Luis.

Researchers at the CIC biomaGUNE, BCMaterials and CIC energiGUNE Basque research centres have managed to modify a class of proteins to give them the ability to transport and store electricity. These proteins can be used to create sustainable, efficient and biocompatible conducting materials. These materials are highly stable and easy to process, which means they can be incorporated into industrial processes.

BCMaterials, in partnership with the Aragon University Institute for Engineering Research (I3A) at the University of Zaragoza, is advancing the MICROBIOSENS project — an initiative focused on developing and applying biosensors to evaluate the malignant potential of tumor cells. The project is funded by the Association of Parents of Children with Cancer of Aragon (Aspanoa).

On October 23 and 24, two predoctoral researchers from BCMaterials successfully defended their PhD theses at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU): Paula Rodríguez Lejarraga and Sara Martín Iglesias. We warmly congratulate both of them for their outstanding work and this important milestone in their research careers.