Dr. Carla Casadevall

Dr. Casadevall was born in Palafrugell-Girona (Spain) in 1991 and is currently a Ramón y Cajal fellow and a Junior Group Leader at the Universitat Rovira i Virigli (URV) and the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) (Tarrgona, Spain), working on the development of catalyst-functionalized polymeric microreactors for the production of solar fuels and chemicals within the fields of artificial photosynthesis and photoredox catalysis. She obtained a BSc in chemistry (2013) and a MSc (2014) in Advanced Catalysis and Molecular Modelling at the University of Girona (Spain). Then she moved to ICIQ to do a PhD (2015-2019) working on homogeneous systems for artificial photosynthesis and photoredox catalysis. During that time, she performed 4 PhD international internships: KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Arizona State University (USA), University of Groningen (Netherlands) and MPI-CEC (Germany). After obtaining her PhD she joined the University of Cambridge (UK) in September 2019 as a BBSRC postdoctoral research associate and later as a Marie Marie Skłodowska–Curie Individual Fellow (2020-2022) working on biohybrid systems for artificial photosynthesis. In October 2022 she came back to Spain and started her independent career with a “La Caixa Junior Leader Incoming Fellowship” and recently with a Ramón y Cajal at ICIQ and URV.

Overall, in her 9 years of research career (since the beginning of the master’s) she has worked in 8 internationally recognized institutions (University of Girona, ICIQ, URV, ASU, MPI-CEC, KTH, University of Groningen, University of Cambridge) in 6 different countries (Spain, Sweden, US, Netherlands, Germany, UK). She has authored 30 scientific papers in top tier international journals (Nature Chemistry, Chem, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.), including 2 book chapters, and has 2 granted patents, from which one is licensed and transferred to a spin off company that is industrializing it. Carla has given over 20 talks in national and international conferences, from which 9 as invited speaker. She has participated in more than 10 national and international projects and she is currently the Enterpreneour PI of the project PHOTOSCALE (FEDER AGAUR 2021 PROD 00043) and PI of the Ramón y Cajal (RYC2021-030935-I). And she has recently been awarded with the “Young Investigator Prize 2023” from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ) and the “Emerging Scientific Talent Prize 2023” from the Catalan Chemical Society (SCQ) for her academic career and her emerging leadership.