The prize for Scientific Research went to Jesús Campos Manzano, CSIC research scientist at the Institute of Chemical Research in Seville. The winning project is entitled ‘Design of Radical Cooperative Catalysts’. The aim is to design new strategies in catalysis, which is the science of accelerating chemical transformations, with the ultimate goal of making the chemical industry more sustainable and efficient.

“The research project aims to develop completely innovative concepts in chemical catalysis. It aims to design disruptive catalytic strategies that lay the fundamental foundations for the discovery of new catalytic transformations. These transformations will enable progress in the direction of chemical sustainability, one of the greatest scientific challenges of the 21st century”.

The prize for Research in Innovation went to Rocío López Igual. She works at the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis with a Ramón y Cajal contract associated with the University of Seville, where she also teaches. She is a biologist and is doing research on cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria that are very important on the planet, but also extremely interesting for biotechnology. Her project is called ‘CianIngenio’, and studies the domestication of cyanobacteria for sustainable biotechnology.

“CianIngenio presents general aspects of the line of research that has been underway since December 2020 at the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis. Despite their advantages, the large-scale use of cyanobacteria in industrial processes is hampered by the scarcity of genetic and synthetic biology tools, as well as their genetic instability. These are the two main pillars of this line of research, the ultimate aim of which is to improve the genetic engineering of these micro-organisms and their use in sustainable biotechnology.