Dr. Garrido pursued his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Antoni Llobet from 2014 to 2018

Dr. Pablo Garrido, an ICIQ alumnus from Prof. Antoni Llobet’s group, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. These grants, announced today, are valued at up to €1.5 million for a five-year project.

An ERC Starting Grant is probably the highest honour of my career and, as a young researcher, a key boost to pursue the scientific ideas I am most excited about. But this is also a recognition of everyone involved in my personal and professional growth, where the ICIQ and my former advisor, Toni Llobet, played a major role. As fresh graduate students, we are a blank canvass, and they undertake the great responsibility of making the best out of us. I’m deeply indebted to ICIQ and especially to Toni for helping me reach my full potential.

Dr. Pablo Garrido

About Dr. Pablo Garrido

Dr. Garrido studied Chemical Engineering in Granada, his hometown. He visited ICIQ for the first time in 2012 as a summer fellow and stayed until he defended his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Antoni Llobet. Pablo’s PhD Thesis was entitled “Molecular Water Oxidation Catalysts Based on Copper and Nickel Complexes” and combined experimental and computational chemistry.

His work at ICIQ focused on the development of novel homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for water oxidation to oxygen. This reaction is the key step in the development of artificial photosynthesis, a strategy inspired by nature to produce solar fuels as a sustainable alternative to the current energy system.

About More4Less

After a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Garrido returns to his hometown to develop the project awarded by the ERC Starting grant. More4Less project seeks to develop new catalytic platforms that harness sunlight and/or electricity to promote proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) steps for the selective reduction of challenging substrates such as N2. These steps will provide advantages by enabling low energy pathways that bypass the most energetic intermediates, offering a mechanistic handle to outcompete the more favourable hydrogen evolution reaction.

The ultimate ambition of More4Less is to provide new fundamental approaches for solar-to-chemicals conversion, contributing to the upcoming energy transition.

Dr. Pablo Garrido

About the ERC

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation.

This year, 494 Starting Grants have been awarded to young scientists and scholars across Europe. The funding – totalling nearly €780 million – supports cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities. It helps researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their most promising ideas.