Seville, April 19, 2018. Margarita Paneque has been appointed as the new institutional delegate of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Andalusia by the President of this institution, Rosa Menéndez, thus replacing Miguel Ferrer, who held the position since February 2012.
Margarita Paneque Sosa (Seville, 1960), graduated (1982) and PhD (1986) in Chemistry from the University of Seville, is a Research Professor at the CSIC (2009) and, after a postdoctoral stay at the University of Sheffield (England), she has developed her scientific career at the CSIC in the Institutes of Materials Science of Seville (1987-1995), and of Chemical Research (since 1996) (both Joint Centers of the CSIC and the University of Seville). She is a specialist in Organometallic Chemistry, and her studies on the synthesis of metallobenzenes, organometallic compounds with an aromatic character, which have great international recognition, can be highlighted. She has published more than 100 research papers in high-impact international journals, and directed 13 doctoral theses. She has participated in numerous research projects, and has maintained collaborations with different Research Centers and Universities (Toulouse, Vienna, Florence, Bordeaux, Pachuca-Mexico, Rutgers-New Jersey), where she has carried out stays as a visiting researcher. She has given numerous lectures at universities and different national and international scientific conferences and meetings. In 2009 she received the Bruker-Inorganic Chemistry Research Award, granted by the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry.
Paneque was Director of the Institute of Chemical Research from 2004 to 2009. She is responsible for the CSIC Research Group OSACA (Organometallic Synthesis and Catalytic Applications), and the Excellence Group of the Junta de Andalucía FQM-119. In the period 2011-2014 she was CSIC responsible for the Associated Unit “Organometallic Compounds and Catalysis Laboratory”. She has extensive experience in the organization of conferences, seminars and scientific events.
Likewise, the new institutional delegate has participated in different activities for the dissemination of Science, such as the Science Fair in Seville, the Researchers’ Night, Conferences, Round Tables, and activities on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and the development of materials and guides for laboratory practices in secondary schools within a project subsidized by the Fecyt. Since 2015, she has been the General Secretary of the Andalusian node of the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists (AMIT-Andalucía).
New challenges
Andalusia, with 23 CSIC centres/institutes, 11 of them mixed with various Andalusian universities and regional councils of the Andalusian Government, is, after Madrid, the autonomous community with the largest number of CSIC centres. Around 1,400 people work there, 45 percent of whom are scientists or technologists.
The CSIC Delegation in Andalusia has, among its functions, the coordination and provision of services to research institutes. In this sense, Margarita Paneque notes that among its main objectives is “strengthening institutional relations with agents in the community, such as the Andalusian Government and universities, to underline the importance of R&D&I and the need to work together”. In this line, the new institutional delegate places the Delegation as an essential mechanism that provides services to research institutes “for dialogue, coordination and support” in research activity. And, even further, Dr. Paneque gives great importance to the dissemination and communication of science. “We must take advantage of an instrument such as the Casa de la Ciencia de Sevilla, a CSIC dissemination centre, to make visible the R&D+i carried out from our centres and so that the researchers themselves find in it a vehicle to disseminate their work as an intrinsic part of their work,” she emphasises.
CSIC in figures
The State Agency Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third in Europe. Attached to the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, its objective is to develop and promote research for the benefit of scientific and technological progress, for which it is open to collaboration with Spanish and foreign entities.
The driving force behind the research is its 123 centres and institutes, distributed throughout all the autonomous communities – 23 centres in Andalusia – and its more than 14,000 employees, of which more than 4,000 are staff researchers. The CSIC has six percent of the staff dedicated to Research and Development in Spain, which generates approximately 20 percent of the national scientific production.
Fuente: Área de Comunicación y Relaciones Institucionales. Casa de la Ciencia-Delegación del CSIC Andalucía
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