Five CIC energiGUNE researchers are once again on Stanford University’s list of the world’s most influential scientists

According to the prestigious Ranking of the World Scientists, the most important researcher in the Basque Country at all levels is Professor Michel Armand, honorary scientific director of the electrochemistry area of CIC energiGUNE, who is also mentioned as the number 1 scientist in Spain in the field of Energy.

Elena Palomo, head of the Scientific Directorate of the Thermal Energy Storage and Conversion Area and Ikerbasque Professor, is the most relevant researcher in the Basque Country in the field of Mechanical Engineering.

The list of CIC energiGUNE scientists is completed by Montse Casas-Cabanas, Scientific Director of the Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Area and Ikerbasque Research Professor; Javier Carrasco, head of the Modelling and Computational Simulation group; and Yaroslav Grosu, head of the Interfacial Phenomena and Porous Media group.

CIC energiGUNE, a leading Basque research centre in electrochemical energy storage and conversion and thermal energy storage and conversion, has five of its scientists in the ‘Ranking of the World Scientists’, produced annually by Stanford University and the academic publishing house Elsevier, which has just released the results of its report for the last year.

Professor Michel Armand, honorary scientific director of the electrochemistry area at CIC energiGUNE, once again appears as the most important researcher in the Basque Country, considering all scientific branches, and is already ranked third in Spain, moving up one place compared to last year. Furthermore, within his field of specialisation – Energy – Professor Armand is the most important researcher in both the Basque Country and Spain, and is ranked 14th in the world.

Also at the top of the ranking of the most influential scientists in the Basque Country, but in this case in the field of Mechanical Engineering, is the Scientific Director of the Thermal Energy Storage and Conversion Area at CIC energiGUNE and Ikerbasque Professor, Elena Palomo. Dr. Palomo is also the eighth most influential researcher in the field of Mechanical Engineering in Spain.

Logically, given CIC energiGUNE’s field of specialisation, the field of Energy is a reference point for two of the other scientists mentioned in the ranking. Thus, together with Michel Armand, the publication maintains Montse Casas-Cabanas, Scientific Director of the Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Area and Ikerbasque Research Professor, as the tenth most important scientist in the Basque Country, and places Yaroslav Grosu, head of the Interfacial Phenomena and Porous Media group, just two places below, in twelfth position among the most influential scientists in the Basque Country in this field.

Finally, in the field of Chemistry and Physics, CIC energiGUNE has the fourth most important researcher in the Basque Country. This is Javier Carrasco, who is ranked 19th in Spain in this field of research and is the 58th most prestigious researcher in the Basque Country in all scientific fields.

The ‘Ranking of the World Scientists’, released this month, contains the information corresponding to the scientific activity carried out in 2023. The data of this publication, considered the main international reference in the scientific field, are collected worldwide according to the impact of the published research -in which more than 210,000 researchers are cited-, taking into account various factors such as co-authorship or the percentage of self-citations, as well as through the combined analysis of a series of standardised parameters, directly related to the impact of the indexed scientific publications. The study gives an overview of both the researchers’ historical careers and the specific work carried out in the last year analysed.

In the case of the historical professional career, it is worth noting that Professor Michel Armand is ranked 10th in the world in the field of energy, which highlights the unrivalled value of his career and the importance of his work at CIC energiGUNE.

Researchers at CIC energiGUNE

Born in France in 1946, Michel Armand began research into rechargeable lithium batteries at the end of the 1980s – by combining them with solid polymer electrolyte – which has enabled the development of the main associated technologies, including the electric vehicle. He is currently the head of the polymer electrolyte research line and honorary scientific director of the electrochemistry area at CIC energiGUNE, where he coordinates a work team focused on achieving the solid-state battery for the electric vehicle of the future. He has received numerous awards throughout his career, such as the Volta Award and the Galileo Prize, and is a Fellow of The Electrochemical Society by the ECS.

Elena Palomo, head of the Thermal Energy Storage and Conversion Area, has led several large-scale research projects and has been an evaluator member of the FP6, FP7 and H2020 programmes. At international level, she has been the French delegate of the executive committee of the ‘Energy Conversion through Energy Storage’ programme of the International Energy Agency (2006-2017) and has piloted for 6 years the most important international network of R&D in thermal storage (‘Compact Thermal Energy Storage’ – SHC/ECES IEA programmes). In 2021 she received the ‘Women and Science’ award, granted by the Association of Professional and Business Women of Alava (AMPEA).

Montse Casas-Cabanas, is the Scientific Director of the Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Area at CIC energiGUNE. Her research focuses mainly on the design of functional materials for energy storage and she has experience in several energy storage technologies. She also actively participates in international educational programmes and research networks, such as i-MESC or Alistore-ERI, as well as in battery technology innovation initiatives at European level, such as Batteries Europe, where she contributes as Technical Leader of the ‘New Emerging Technologies’ group, and Battery2030+, as thematic leader of new chemistries. In 2021 she was awarded the Young Researcher Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry.

Yaroslav Grosu is Head of the Interfacial Phenomena and Porous Media Group at CIC energiGUNE, which he joined in 2015, focusing his research since then on the development of materials for thermal storage applications. He holds a PhD from Blaise Pascal University in France in Physical Chemistry and from the National Technical University of Ukraine, Kiev Polytechnic Institute, in Thermal Engineering. He coordinates the European project FET Proactive Electro-intrusion, the state project STES Knowledge Generation, and has been awarded a Ramón y Cajal grant, ranking second in the area of energy and transpor

Javier Carrasco is head of the Computational Modelling and Simulation group at CIC energiGUNE, with an extensive background that has revolved around atomistic first-principles thermodynamics, density functional theory, theoretical chemistry and solid-state physics. In 2018, he received China’s ‘Top 10 Breakthrough of the Year’ award in the field of electronic science and technology for the paper ‘Atomic-level energy storage mechanism of cobalt hydroxide electrode for pseudocapacitors’, published in Nature Communications. He has also been the recipient of a Ramón y Cajal Grant, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

In addition to these awards, the ranking also includes the work carried out by other researchers with a past at CIC energiGUNE, which reinforces the recognition of the work carried out by the centre in recent years and its positioning as a benchmark for the development of outstanding, cutting-edge scientific activity.