- Jonathan Quinson, Blanca Moncunill and Ana Ballesteros will begin their journey at the UDC next Monday, September 1st, joining Máximo Sozzo, Carlos Vázquez Sierra and David Polo.
- Their recruitment is carried out within the framework of the 2023 call for this program, which seeks to promote the incorporation of national and foreign research personnel with an outstanding track record in R&D centers.
A Coruña, August 28, 2025.- The University of A Coruña will incorporate, starting next week, into its research staff, the last three beneficiaries of the Ramón y Cajal grants from the 2023 call. Jonathan Quinson, Blanca Moncunill and Ana Ballesteros complete the list of six people who have joined the UDC over the past year and who have these prestigious grants; each of them endowed with amounts exceeding 250,000 euros. These new additions join those of recent months led by Máximo Sozzo, Carlos Vázquez and David Polo.
The Ramón y Cajal grants, granted by the State Research Agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, aim to promote the incorporation of national and foreign researchers with an outstanding track record in R&D centers, in addition to facilitating the development of cutting-edge research and promoting the employment stabilization of these professionals.
In recent years, the UDC has experienced a notable increase in the number of staff benefiting from this program, currently counting around thirty people developing their projects at the institution under the auspices of this aid.
Energy, paleobiology and migration policies
The new additions will enrich the different lines of research at the UDC, as they do so in different areas, all of which are of the utmost relevance and relevance today. Thus, Jonathan Quinson, a French researcher, engineer in Natural Sciences from ESPCI Paris Tech (France) and Master in Green Chemistry from Imperial College London (United Kingdom). He carried out several postdoctoral stays as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow in different groups at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), where he developed new syntheses of nanomaterials that lead to relevant nanocatalysts for a more efficient energy conversion. He also obtained a Marie Skłodowska-Curie global scholarship at Stanford University (USA) and was a full associate professor at Aarhus University (Denmark), where he directs the Nanomaterials Engineering for Sustainable Technologies group.
He comes to the UDC through the InTalent program, developed between the University of A Coruña and the company Inditex for the recruitment and retention of research talent. In A Coruña, he will work focused on the design, synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials for use as catalysts for electrochemical applications, with a focus on energy conversion but also on water treatment.
For her part, Blanca Moncunill Solé, a paleobiologist, has a degree in Biology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a doctorate in Biodiversity. She did a postdoctoral stay at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, where she delved into the study of extinct lagomorphs applying cutting-edge techniques.
In 2021 she established her own line of research in the Galician University System (SUG), becoming the only researcher dedicated to the paleobiological study of micromammals in Galicia. She currently has a Marie Curie-ERA contract, funded by the European Union (EU), at the prestigious CIBIO (Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos) in Portugal.
Throughout her career, Blanca has been recognized with several awards for both her academic performance and her scientific contributions. The line of research she will develop at the UDC focuses on determining the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of extinct lagomorphs in the face of environmental and climatic changes in the past; which will allow us to identify trends and key indicators to learn how species responded in the past to climatic changes similar to those of today.
Ana Ballesteros Pena, a political scientist and PhD in Sociology, works in the fields of social and legal sciences. She is a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher (UNA4CAREER-COFUND) at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), where she leads the GEIPP project Gender Equality and Intersectionality in Penitentiary Policies: a Multilevel Analysis (2023-2025). Previously, she obtained another Marie Curie postdoctoral contract for the development of the Governmigration project at the University of Toronto (Canada) and at the University of A Coruña and a postdoctoral contract for Talent Attraction of the Community of Madrid at the UCM.
This researcher will join the department of Sociology and Communication Sciences, where she will work on the expansion and consolidation of her line of research on social control policies, particularly prison and migration control policies, with a gender focus.
Máximo Sozzo, an Argentine researcher in the field of criminology, specializing in Latin America, who joined the UDC through the InTalent program earlier this year, also works in this area of knowledge. He is also a Leverlhume Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom) and author and/or editor of numerous scientific publications in this field of study.
As a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the UDC, he develops comparative research on the transformations of punishment in contemporary societies, seeking to innovate with respect to existing descriptive and explanatory frameworks, which remain anchored in an exploration exclusively focused on English-speaking contexts of the Global North.
Virus control and particle physics
During this year, David Polo Montero, a doctor in Microbiology from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), specialized in environmental virology, also joined. He was awarded the Extraordinary Doctoral Award for his thesis “Control and elimination of enteric viruses in bivalve molluscs and water using solar purification and disinfection systems”. He carried out, among others, a postdoctoral stay at IFREMER, the French national institute for marine research, where he specialized in the study of norovirus (the main cause of acute gastroenteritis worldwide) and in the use of human intestinal organoids to evaluate its infectivity and persistence in seawater and oysters. He was also a “María Zambrano” postdoctoral researcher at USC and at the CRETUS institute, where he worked on the detection and monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 at the community level, using an epidemiological approach based on wastewater, participating in the first national early warning system for COVID-19.
At the University of A Coruña, David joins the NanoToxGen group of the Interdisciplinary Center for Chemistry and Biology (CICA) led by Vanessa Valdeiglesias. His work focuses on the study of pathogenic viruses in aquatic environments from a “One Health” perspective; using new approaches for their surveillance and characterization, identification of new transmission vectors, and the application of new methodologies to analyze their effects on health.
Finally, the appointment of Carlos Vázquez Sierra, who also comes from the InTalent program, is also noteworthy. He has a doctorate in Nuclear and Particle Physics from the USC. He worked at the Netherlands Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF, Amsterdam), as well as at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, Geneva), later returning to the USC as a María Zambrano researcher.
His work as a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the UDC focuses on carrying out measurements related to the Higgs boson, and on the direct search for dark matter and possible candidates for new physics in the CERN LHCb experiment, of which he has also been a part since 2012. He has coordinated various working groups inside and outside the LHCb, both on particle physics and on computational tasks, and is currently also the deputy physics coordinator of a new detector that will be built at CERN in the coming years, CODEX-b, for the search for very long-lived particles.
Support for talent and excellence
The incorporation of excellent research staff is part of the Strategic Plan of the University of A Coruña, in which there is a clear commitment to promoting quality research. An objective for which various lines of attraction and retention of talent have been established. Initiatives that are essentially channeled through the Research Staff Recruitment Office (OCPI).