Dr. María J. Mosquera’s current position is a Full-Professor at the Physical-Chemistry department. She also leads the research group “Nanomaterials” for 20 years, focused on developing smart materials by their repellent, self-cleaning, depolluting and/or auto-sterilizing properties. These advanced materials have application in different fields including building, Cultural Heritage or textiles. During this period, she has led 14 funded research projects (1 H2020 European project, 10 Spanish projects and 3 Andalusian projects) and 18 contracts with private companies and other institutions. Regarding her leadership over projects, the greatest achievement has been the coordination of “InnovaConcrete”, a multidisciplinary project focused on development of innovative materials and techniques for concrete-based Cultural Heritage conservation. InnovaConcrete was funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, with a budget of 7 million €, being the project with the highest funding to date at the University of Cadiz. An interdisciplinary team composed of 29 partners, with a strong scientific background in simulation techniques and nanomaterials synthesis, combined with a wide knowledge of Cultural Heritage conservation, from 11 different countries take part in InnovaConcrete.
Moreover, she has closely worked with several commercial enterprises, being responsible for 18 relevant contracts with significant companies such as SIKA, COSENTINO, COMPAC and TINO NATURAL STONE. She is also the author of 14 patents, 6 of them under exploitation. The goal of these transference activities has been to bring our innovative and cost competitive technological solutions to the market. Nowadays, two advanced materials developed in our group is been scaling up at industrial level by SIKA multinational in order to be commercialized worldwide. In addition, she has collaborated with different restoration and conservation companies, providing new materials for applying in restoration of significant monuments. She also collaborates with different public institutions such as Alhambra foundation, developing consulting services. Moreover, she has received 3 prizes for my transference activities.
As a result of my research activities, Dr. María is author of more than 100 scientific papers, 70 of which are in the first quartile (Q1) of their category according to JCR-ISI listings of indexed journals (Web of Science, Thomson Reuters). She has 498 citations in the last year (2023) and h-index is 34 and i10.index is 63 (Google Scholar, 15/1/2024). According to Scopus, her h-index is 31. In the last year, she has been invited by the editors of the prestigious journal “Nature Review Materials” with impact factor 76.679 to write a review focused on the smart materials developed by our research group. She has also published a recent paper “C-S-H gel by reaction between silica oligomers and portlandite: A promising approach to repair cementitious materials” in the prestigious journal “Cement and Concrete Research”. It has become a reference in the related topic (>60 citations in two years).
Dr. Maria has supervised 11 doctoral theses (+3 on going). She has been a lecturer in the International Master “Nanotechnology and Cultural Heritage”, organized by University of Palermo. And also have been invited speakers for most 30 international conferences. In 2017, she was the Chair of the international conference TechnoHeritage, held in Cádiz, with over 200 participants from 10 different countries. Dr. Maria is a member of the Editorial Committee of two JCR Journals: “Coatings” and “Journal of Cultural Heritage”. Moreover, she has positively evaluated in the 4-research period and 1-knowledge transfer period. She was also the Vice-Rector for Science and Technology Policy at the University of Cadiz from 2019 to 2023.