BCMaterials will participate in six new projects funded by the Basque Government under the Elkartek 2026 Programme. The projects cover the centre’s four main research areas: environmental materials, health-related materials, energy generation and storage, and digital technologies. Below is a brief overview of each initiative.

CICe2026: Solid-State Batteries

José María “Txema” Porro Azpiazu, an Ikerbasque Research Fellow and Ramón y Cajal researcher at BCMaterials, has been appointed the new president of the Spanish Society for Neutron Techniques (SETN). He succeeds María Teresa Fernández Díaz, a researcher at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France.

His appointment was announced during the SETN General Assembly, held as part of the 12th International Meeting of the Spanish Society for Neutron Techniques in Bilbao from 13 to 15 July.

BCMaterials is pleased to welcome Karolina Zofia Milowska, who joins the centre as an Ikerbasque Research Fellow and Ramón y Cajal Fellow. She holds a PhD in Physical Sciences from the University of Warsaw and has developed an outstanding international career at institutions including Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Cambridge and CIC nanoGUNE.

In recent years, scientific collaboration between BCMaterials and Chinese universities, research institutes, and companies has continued to grow through joint projects, research stays, and cooperation agreements. This strategic partnership was further strengthened in May through a two-week visit to China by BCMaterials Scientific Director Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez and Ikerbasque Research Professor Qi Zhang.

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

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).

BCMaterials will develop four new research projects within the ‘Generación del Conocimiento’ (Knowledge Generation) program, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. The projects will cover very different aspects of new materials research: from proposing new computational simulations for the characterization of magnetoactive and electroactive materials, to innovative chemical synthesis systems for nanomaterials, and the creation of new perovskite solar cells and sustainable catalysts for synthetic fuels.