Ramón y Cajal Researcher – Organic Chemistry

E-mail: Cristina.MJimenez(at)uclm.es

Cristina holds a PhD in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies from the “Università degli studi di Trieste” -UNITs- (Italy) and a PhD in Chemistry from the “Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha” -UCLM- (Spain) (International and Cum Laude Mention). She carried out her doctoral studies under the joint supervision of Prof. Maurizio Prato (UNITs) and Dr. Ester Vázquez (UCLM), focusing on new graphene-based composite materials, and being funded by the Italian pre-doctoral competitive grant “Borsa di studio per realizare il dottorato de ricerca (“Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca”, Italy). During her PhD studies, Cristina spent several stays at prestigious centers such as the University of Brighton (UK) and the “Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati” –SISSA- (Italy), working on the synthesis and characterization of new graphene-based hydrogels and their application as biomaterials for 3D cell culture. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at IRICA (Spain) developing self-healing hybrid hydrogels, and in October 2017 she joined Dr. Alberto Bianco’s group at CNRS (France) to work mainly on the biodegradation and biomedical applications of various carbon-based nanomaterials. From October 2020 to March 2024 she worked as a CONEX-Plus Marie Skłodowska-Curie researcher at the “Universidad Carlos III de Madrid” (UC3M), being the Principal Investigator of the 3DSkG project under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 801538. Her research focused on the development of new biomaterials for wound healing, using hydrogels and graphene-derived nanomaterials as bactericidal agents. In addition, this grant gave her the opportunity to spend 3 months at the private company Domotek (Spain), with which she is still collaborating today, and where she gained new skills in 3D bioprinting techniques. Since April 2024, Cristina has been working in the MSOC Nanochemistry Group (IRICA, Ciudad Real), focusing her research on the 3D bioprinting of advanced functional biomaterials.

Up to date, and due to the great and excellent research work carried out in the periods of stay abroad and centers detailed above, Cristina possesses a CV made of more than 34 accepted papers in international peer reviewed indexed journals (first, second or last author in the 44% of them), several additional publications under revision or in preparation and 25 communications to national and international scientific conferences (many posters and some oral contributions). Her scientific contributions have mainly been framed in international research projects, during her stays in Italy, France and Spain, including the Graphene Flagship. Cristina’s potential has also been acknowledged by the granting of a prize by the “Grupo Español del Carbón” in the category of the best scientific article. Other general quality indicators of Cristina are:
– H-index (WOS): 21.
– Total number of citations received as for January 2024 (WOS data): 2504.

She has also carried out teaching activities in Spanish and English languages and supervised the work of several PhD, Master and undergraduate students, always receiving very positive evaluations of her teaching activity. Since the beginning of her teaching and research career, Cristina has continued her training, taking courses and seminars also focused on the improvement of teaching.

In addition, Cristina is also starting to show commitment to science outreach, including talks and workshops in high schools, in the “Semana de la Ciencia y de la Innovación de Madrid”, the European Researchers’ Night and interviews in the media (“Programa Investigadores por el Mundo”, Libertad FM). She has also carried out management and coordination tasks of the PintofScience Spain and the “VI Jornadas Doctorales de la UCLM”.

Cristina is serving as well as Guest Editor for Special Issues in the open access journal Nanomaterials (ISSN 2079-4991), and she often develops reviewing activities including the revision of submitted papers to high quality journals and serving also as external evaluator of doctoral theses.