Manuel Souto Salom

Manuel Souto Salom (Valencia, 1988) is a Distinguished Researcher & Principal Investigator at CIQUS (University of Santiago de Compostela, USC). He holds a double degree in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the University of Valencia and from the École de Chimie, Polymères et Matériaux (ECPM) de Strasbourg (France), respectively, doing a research internship at PLAPIQUI (Argentina). He also earned a Master’s degree in Molecular and Supramolecular Chemistry (2011) from the University of Strasbourg conducting his Master thesis at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) of Lisbon. He obtained his PhD in Materials Science at Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) with Prof. Jaume Veciana in 2016 conducting two research stays at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and at the University of Antwerp. In 2017, he started to work as postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol-UV).

In 2019, he started his independent career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro (Chemistry Department) and CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials. In 2022 he was promoted to Principal Researcher (tenure) at the same institution. He received, among other distinctions, the first runner-up NanoMatMol PhD award (2017), PhD Extraordinary award (2018), and the European Award on Molecular Magnetism Doctoral Thesis (2020). 

His research interests encompass molecular electronics, electroactive polymers and organic batteries. His main current research interest is the design and synthesis of new functional electroactive porous frameworks (e.g., COFs & MOFs) based on redox-active organic building blocks for electronics and energy storage applications.  In 2021, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant with the project ELECTROCOFS, which aims to design a new family of redox-active COF-based electrodes for rechargeable batteries.