After completing a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1992, Prof. Monica Lira-Cantu obtained her Master’s and PhD degrees in Materials Science at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1995 and 1997, respectively. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow for Schneider Electric and ICMAB until 1998. From 1999 to 2001 she was a permanent senior staff chemist at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering (formerly Mobil Technology Co) in New Jersey (USA), establishing a group on energy-related applications.
Dr Lira-Cantu has received various awards, as well as visiting scientist fellowships at the following laboratories: Universitetet i Oslo (Norway) (ESF, 2003), RisDTU Nationallaboratoriet (Denmark) (AGAUR, 2004/05), and Center for Advanced Science and Innovation (Osaka University, Japan) (Canon Foundation in Europe, 2006). She is group leader of the Nanostructured Materials for Photovoltaic Energy since 2006. She obtained a tenured track position at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in 2007, and she was promoted to Scientific Researcher in 2017 and Full Professor in 2022.
She is currently an evaluator for the European Commission for the ERC Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants. She has coordinated and organised more than 24 scientific conferences and is scientific referee for more than 20 international and European research agencies, and more than 50 scientific journals. Prof. Lira-Cantu is a member of the editorial board of SN Applied Science (Nature). She is Editor-in-Chief of APL Energy (AIP Publishing) and Advisory Editorial Board for Discovery Materials and Springer Nature Applied Sciences (Nature); Adv. Energy and Sustainability (Wiley); Chemical Physics Impact (Elsevier) and Matter (Cell Press). Since 2016 she has been a member of the local and national advisory board for the Nanotechnology and Chemical Science degree (INCQ) of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM, Mexico).
The research interests of Prof. Lira-Cantu lie in the synthesis and application of nanostructured materials for highly efficient and high stable next-generation thin-film solar cells: halide-perovskite, dye-sensitised, alloxide and organic solar cells. Her group has developed halide perovskite solar cells with efficiencies above 23 % and 1000 h stability under continuous illumination. The group also focuses on applying solar cells in printed batteryless, self-powered electronics for the IoT (on flexible, transparent and/or smart materials). In-situ and operando characterization applying Raman, X-ray diffraction, Photooluminiscece and Impedance spectroscopy, is also a research field under her direction.
Since 2007 she has been the PI of several projects (national, European and with industry), for example, she was the coordinator of a COST Action Project (StableNextSol MP1307) related to the study of the stability of Organic and Perovskite solar cells. The project had more than 450 members from 35 countries and 22 companies. It was highlighted four times in the SETIS and European Energy Innovation Magazine, and selected as a Success Story by the European Commission.
She has directed more than 90 members in her group: 1 Visiting professor, 1 ICREA Jr Group Leader, 1 Jr Group Leader “La Caixa” incoming, 2 project Managers, 8 Postdocs, 1 Beatriu de Pinos Postdoc, >10 PhDs (4 in course) and > 70 undergraduate students: Master, Bachelors and short term visiting students. Prof. Monica Lira-Cantu has more than 135 scientific publications, among them more than 125 journal articles, 1 edited book, 10 book chapters, 11 patents. According to Google Scholar, she has over 10,000 citations overall and an H index of 52.