Victoria Esteso Carrizo, a researcher affiliated with the Multifunctional Optical Materials Group of the Materials Science Institute of Seville, has received a scholarship from “La Caixa” to pursue doctoral studies in Spain.

The scholarship programme of the Obra Social “la Caixa” is among the best in the world due to its financial endowment, the services it offers students before, during and after the scholarship, and the diversity of the subsidised disciplines. The selection process includes an English test and a personal interview, and involves professors and researchers with a solid curriculum of contributions in the disciplinary field of the application.

Among the 672 accepted applications, this young researcher has been the only applicant from the University of Seville to receive one of the 25 scholarships offered. (See statistics)

Victoria has been working in the Multifunctional Optical Materials group, led by CSIC research professor Hernán Ruy Míguez, since October 2013.

The project for which she has received the grant will last four years and is entitled: “Casimir forces in real plane-parallel systems”. Her research —of a theoretical and experimental nature— will focus on the study of the Casimir force from the point of view of the optical properties of real materials. The objective is to design and synthesize in the laboratory new nanostructured materials that allow the degree of adhesion or the reduction of friction between them to be controlled at the nano- and microscale, to apply them, for example, in nano- and micro-electromechanical systems.