Juan Ramón Sánchez Valencia has been awarded the Prize for Excellence in Research in Innovation in the IV edition of the Manuel Losada Villasante Awards. A physicist and materials engineer, Sánchez Valencia is a member of the Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), a joint centre of the US and the CSIC.
His project ‘Development of new advanced functional materials with applications in photonics, sensors, electronics and photovoltaics‘ has been awarded a prize of 6,000 euros. Sánchez, an expert in Nanotechnology, applies this discipline to sensors, microelectronics and solar cells, as well as semiconductor devices, sensors, filters or X-ray sources.
In 2014, this scientist also received the Royal Seville Academy of Sciences Award for Young Researchers, for his contributions to the development of photonic sensors (for example, oxygen or nitrogen dioxide) and portable X-ray sources based on carbon nanotubes, as well as for his work related to the manufacture of carbon nanotubes with atomic precision.
The other two winners of the Manuel Losada Villasante Awards were Pablo Huertas Sánchez, with the Award for Excellence in Scientific Research, and Manuel Pérez Ruiz, with the Award for Excellence in Research in the Agri-Food area.
The jury was made up of prominent figures from the academic, economic, journalistic and social fields of Andalusia, such as Miguel Ángel Castro, Rector of the University of Seville, Juan Ávila, Mayor of Carmona, or María del Carmen Martín Rivas, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development of the Andalusian Government.
Manuel Losada Villasante is the founder of the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis, the first Andalusian scientist to receive the Prince of Asturias Award, and in addition to giving the award its name, he also acts as honorary president of the jury.