Prof. Laura Lechuga awarded the 2020 Rei Jaume I Prize in New Technologies

by Virginia Greco

The prestigious Rei Jaume I Award, sponsored by the Valencian Government (Generalitat Valenciana), is conferred to experts who have significantly contributed to the advancement of their research fields. It recognises the accomplishments in six categories with a golden medal and a 100,000-euro cheque to be used mainly for research and innovation activities. Prof. Laura M. Lechuga Gomez receives the New Technologies Award for her long innovative career in the field of nanobiosensors.

The Valencian Government (Generalitat Valenciana), together with the Foundation Premios Rei Jaume I, announced today the awardees of the 32th edition of the Rei Jaume I Awards, one of the highest recognitions for a research career in Spain. Prof. Laura M. Lechuga Gomez, Full Professor of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Head of the Nanobiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the ICN2 and a member of the Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBER-BBN), has received the New Technologies Award for her career in the field of nanobiosensors.

Prof. Laura M. Lechuga received her PhD in Chemistry from the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain) in 1992. The principal focus of her research is the development of novel nanobiosensor devices based on nanoplasmonics and silicon-based photonics principles, including surface biofunctionalization, microfluidics for automatic fluid delivery and complete lab-on-a-chip integration for point-of-care devices. The use of nanobiosensor devices for a wide range of challenging clinical and environmental applications is one of her main objectives.

She has published over 270 articles, book chapters and proceedings, has 8 families of patents, and has presented her work worldwide in more than 350 invited talks. She has co-founded two spin-offs companies. has been Adjunct Professor at The Artic University of Norway (2012-2016) and Distinguished Visiting professor at University of Campinas (Brazil) (2013-2017). Prof. Lechuga is Associate Editor of Analyst (RSC) and has been Associate Editor in other two Physics and Engineering Journals. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of several high-level research Centres around the world and has taken part in numerous international evaluation panels. Prof. Lechuga has also participated in many EU funded projects (some of them as Coordinator) and has been part of various EU Evaluation Panels in the 6th, 7th and H2020 Framework Programmes (including Adv. ERC panels).

Prof. Lechuga has previously received several prizes and recognitions along her career, such as the Prize of Physics, Innovation and Technology from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and BBVA Foundation in 2016 and the Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA) award in 2014. The Rei Jaume I Award consolidates even more her profile as an international reference expert in a moment when her work is in the spotlight because of her leading role in a research project devoted to the diagnostic of the COVID-19 disease, CoNVaT.

The other awardees of this year's edition are: Francisco José García Vidal in Basic Research; Diego Puga Pequeño in Economy; Miguel Beato del Rosal in Medical Research; Fernando Maestre Gil in Environment Protection; and Verónica Pascual Boé, in the Entrepreneur category.