Verónica Bermúdez (Physics)
Verónica Bermúdez |
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Verónica Bermúdez was born in Madrid in 1972. She obtained her degree and PhD in physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) in 1996 and 1998, respectively. She was granted an extraordinary doctorate award for her research thesis on "Growth and characterization of bulk periodically poled lithium niobate doped with Yb and Er". During this period she was a visiting scientist at the Università de Padova and CEA-Grenoble.
After her PhD she moved to France where, from 1999 to 2000, she worked in the Laboratory for Advanced Materials of CEA-LETI in Saclay on the nonlinear optical properties of catenanes and rotaxanes (molecules which can be modified by light action).
In 2002, Verónica returned to Spain to take up a tenure track position, within the first round of the Ramon y Cajal Programme, in the Materials Physics Department at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid until October 2005. She then returned to France to the IRDEP (Institute for Research and Development on Photovoltaic Energy), where she is now in charge of the Optoelectronic Characterization Group.
Verónica has published over 80 articles and has made a similar number of contributions to international conferences in the fields of growth and characterisation of inorganic crystals for lasers and nonlinear optics, and semiconductor crystals. Furthermore, she has lectured on several courses on introductory physics and physics of materials. For her work on hydrogen bond-assisted molecular machines, she was a finalist for the European Community Descartes Prize in 2003, and was granted the Science and Technology Prize for Young Researchers by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2004. In 2007, she was awarded the Shieber Prize by the International Organization of Crystal Growth.
Dr. Bermúdez' present research interest concentrates on materials for energy conversion.