María Escudero-Escribano (born June 3, 1983) is a Spanish chemist and Director of the Nano-Electrochemical group at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

. Her research considers the design of materials for catalysis, fuel cells and sustainable chemistry.

Early life and education

Escudero-Escribano was born in

Cáceres, Spain Cáceres ( , ) is a city of Spain located in the autonomous community of Extremadura. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the province of Cáceres. Cáceres lies at the feet of the Sierra de la Mosca, a modest hill range. It i ...

. Her father is a technical engineer who specialises in chemistry. She attended the Camilo Hernández de Coria public school until the age of thirteen, before moving to the Norba Caesarina Institute. She studied chemical engineering at the

University of Extremadura University of Extremadura (in es, Universidad de Extremadura) is a Spanish public university in Extremadura (Badajoz and Cáceres). It was founded in 1973 by Decree 991/1973, May 10 (BOE May 18) of the Ministry of Education and Science of Sp ...

. She moved to

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD at the

Autonomous University of Madrid The Autonomous University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; UAM), commonly known as simply la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 alongside the Autonomous Univers ...

in 2011. She worked alongside Ángel Cuesta on the electrochemical reactions that take place inside fuel cells. During her doctorate she worked at the

Residencia de Estudiantes The Residencia de Estudiantes, literally the "Student Residence", is a centre of Spanish cultural life in Madrid. The Residence was founded to provide accommodation for students along the lines of classic colleges at Bologna, Salamanca, Cambridge ...

as an intern, and completed visiting scientist positions at the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the l ...

and

University of Ulm Ulm University (german: Universität Ulm) is a public university in Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1967 and focuses on natural sciences, medicine, engineering sciences, mathematics, economics and computer sci ...

. The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry selected the doctoral thesis of Escudero-Escribano as the best PhD in the region of Madrid. After earning her doctorate she joined the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fir ...

as a postdoctoral researcher. Here she started working on novel electrocatalysts for fuel cells.

Research and career

In 2017 Escudero-Escribano was appointed as a Professor at the

, where she leads the Nano-Electrochemical group. Her research considers new materials for electrochemical reactions, and investigates them using ''in situ'' optical spectroscopy and microscopy. She is interested in using these materials for sustainable energy applications; including the generation of hydrogen through water splitting. In particular, Escudero-Escribano works on new catalysts for energy conversion devices. This involves searching for alternatives for the platinum catalysts that are typically used in fuel cells. She has developed platinum alloys that contain lanthanide elements which are more efficient. She has considered the coupling of water electrolysers with other renewable sources, such as solar panels and windmills. Typically this coupling is complicated due to the intermittent power generation and low efficiency of renewable energy sources, but can be facilitated by developing the water electrolysers, where energy can be stored in the chemical bonds between hydrogen molecules. The efficiency of these electrolysers depends on the electrodes; in particular, the anode where the water oxidation takes place act as the bottlenecks of these devices. In 2019 it was announced that the

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would support Prof. Jan Rossmeisl, with Escudero-Escribano as Co-PI, in establishing the Center for

High Entropy Alloys High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are alloys that are formed by mixing equal or relatively large proportions of (usually) five or more elements. Prior to the synthesis of these substances, typical metal alloys comprised one or two major components with ...

Catalysis at the

. The Centre looks to contribute toward decarbonisation, making a more sustainable chemical industry. Worldwide the chemical industry is responsible for almost 10 % of greenhouse gas emissions.

Awards and honours

* 2014 Sapere Aude - Research Talent Grant * 2016 European Chemical Society (EuChemS) Young Chemist Award * 2016 Young Researcher CIDETEC Award * 2018 American Electrochemical Society Energy Technology Division Young Investigator Award * 2018

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Young Series Talent Out of Series Award * 2018 Princess of Girona Foundation Scientific Research Award * 2019 Clara Immerwahr Award by UniSysCat * 2019 Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry Young Researcher Award * 2019

Nature Research Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scie ...

Award for Inspiring Science Finalist

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Escudero-Escribano, María 1983 births Living people Spanish women chemists Spanish women scientists People from Cáceres, Spain