The Social Council of the University of Valladolid has agreed to award this prize to the Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, which will be presented at the opening ceremony of the 2023-2024 academic year in September.
The Social Council of the University of Valladolid has agreed to grant the 2023 Social Council Award to the Professor of Inorganic Chemistry María Luz Rodríguez Méndez. This award recognises the excellent career of María Luz Rodríguez Méndez, which is reflected in the quantity and relevance of her teaching and research merits and in the transfer of knowledge carried out, which, in the opinion of the jury, “in addition to enriching the heritage of knowledge, contributes decisively to fostering relations between the University and Society”.
Director of the Consolidated Research Unit recognised by the Junta de Castilla y León UIC080 and the UVASens research group, María Luz Rodríguez Méndez is part of the list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists recently published by Stanford University.
She began her work in the field of sensors during her post-doctoral training at the University of Windsor (Canada), which she completed with stays at various universities in France, Italy and Germany.
Since 1996 she has dedicated her research to the development of new nanostructured sensors for food analysis and their use in electronic noses and tongues, work which is carried out through public funding and in collaboration with the food industry (15 projects funded by companies in the last 5 years).
This novel concept of sensors modified with electrocatalytic nanomaterials has enabled him to publish more than 170 papers in prestigious indexed journals, which have been widely cited by the international scientific community.
She is the author of 14 books or book chapters and 3 patents and has given more than 30 lectures at international conferences. She has also supervised or co-directed 11 doctoral theses, 3 of them with extraordinary prizes.
Visiting professor at the universities of Pisa, Firenze and Lecce (Italy), Metz and Clermont-Ferrand (France) and at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil), where she collaborates in teaching and research, María Luz Rodríguez Méndez is also coordinator of the interuniversity Master in Nanoscience and Molecular Nanotechnology at UVa and has been founder and first director of the Chair Brazil-University of Valladolid.
She is also the promoter of the Castilla y León Women Researchers’ Conference, an activity that she has chaired for 10 years and whose objective is to give visibility to research carried out by women and to attract young women to research in Science and Technology.
