University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Javier Montenegro
Javier Montenegro received his master degree (2003) and PhD (2009) from the University of Santiago de Compostela, under the direction of Prof. Susana López, working in the field of synthetic retinoids and their evaluation as artificial pigments in bacteriorhodopsins. In 2005 he was a visiting scientist in the group of Prof. Steven Ley at Cambridge University (Total Synthesis). In 2007 he was a visiting scientist at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla) working with Prof. Reza M. Ghadiri in prebiotic chemistry and supramolecular dynamic polymers. In 2009 he moved to the University of Geneva for postdoctoral studies with Prof. Stefan Matile in biosensing and synthetic transport systems. In 2012 he returned to Spain to the Organic Chemistry Department at the University of Santiago de Compostela and the CIQUS. He was then promoted to Profesor Titular (2020) and Oportunius Distinguished Research Profesor (2021). Javier sits at the advisory board of ChemSystemsChem and Supramolecular Materials. He has achieved competitive funding from international fuding aganecies including Pathfinder and Transition grants from the EIC, La Caixa health grant and one International Traingin Network. He has supervised 11 PhD students and 14 Postodoctoral associates with prestigous funding including 5 Marie Curies and 5 JdC. He has received different prestigious awards including the Juan de la Cierva (2012), the Ramón y Cajal (2015), the ERC Staring grant (2015), a Young Investigator Grant of the Human Frontier Science Program (2017), the JSP Fellow 52th Bürgenstock Conference (2017), the Prize of Young Investigators of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (2018), the Prize of Young Research Group Leaders in Chemical Biology of the RSEQ (2019) and the ERC Synergy grant (2025).