Seville, February 15, 2015. F. Javier Rojo Marcos has been appointed as the new director of the Isla de la Cartuja Scientific Research Center (cicCartuja), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the University of Seville (US) and the Andalusian Regional Government.
Javier Rojo replaces Miguel Ángel de la Rosa Acosta, professor of Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Seville, who has been in charge of the directorship for the last eight years. Rojo is a Scientific Researcher at the CSIC and directs the Glycosystems laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Research at cicCartuja. In addition, from April 2012 to November 2017 he held the position of coordinator of the Chemical Sciences and Technologies Area of the State Agency CSIC.
cicCartuja is a non-profit public institution whose main objective is the creation of knowledge and the improvement of the quality of life of citizens through scientific and technical research.
Located in the Scientific and Technological Park of Seville, cicCartuja houses three mixed Institutes of the CSIC and the US: the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis, the Institute of Materials Science of Seville and the Institute of Chemical Research.
cicCartuja researchers develop their work in different but close scientific areas on the border between biology, chemistry and physics, which facilitates the approach to projects from different points of view and with complementary methodologies. The interdisciplinary nature is precisely the most unique feature of cicCartuja, its greatest particularity among centers of its nature. Likewise, the mixed composition of the three Institutes, with personnel from the CSIC and the US, allows it to develop postgraduate activities at the forefront of scientific discovery.
About Javier Rojo
Graduated in Chemical Sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1989), Javier Rojo obtained his PhD from the same university in 1995. He completed his first postdoctoral stay (1995-1998) at the Supramolecular Chemistry Laboratory of the Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg (France), under the supervision of Prof. Jean Marie Lehn, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry in 1987. His second stay abroad (1998-1999) took place in the Department of Chemistry at Boston College (USA), under Prof. Larry W. McLaughlin.
After his return to Spain he joined the IIQ and in May 2004 he obtained the position of Senior Scientist at the CSIC, being promoted in 2011 to Scientific Researcher at this organization. In 2012 he was appointed coordinator of the Chemical Sciences Area at the CSIC.
During this time, Rojo has directed the Glycosystems Laboratory of the Department of Bioorganic Chemistry at the IIQ. The main lines of research he works on focus on Supramolecular Chemistry and Molecular Recognition; Dendrimer Chemistry; Carbohydrate Chemistry; Biological Chemistry; and their applications in Nanobiomedicine.
