Guanajuato, Gto., September 9, 2017.- The International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM), gave the 2017 Medal to Dr. Eduardo Peña Cabrera, professor ascribed to the Department of Chemistry of the University of Guanajuato (UG) for his outstanding work done in the chemistry knowledge area.

The award considers the contributions made in a ten-year period. The contribution of the candidates is evaluated by a jury and this year, the award was given to Dr. Peña Cabrera during the European Advanced Materials Congress in Stockholm, Sweden.

On the matter, the scholar said that he began to research this topic over a decade ago. "The advanced materials are those who overcome in properties those with we traditionally have worked before or used in the last hundreds or thousands of years," he explained.

For example, graphene is very flexible and extremely resistant, hence, it can be used in many areas such as biology, electronics, or large data storage, "I believe that it will be the material of the future," he sustained.

Another characteristic of these advanced materials is that they respond to a stimulus, such as light, and that response can be used for different applications, which can be the screen of a cell phone or a TV, even applications in biology or medicine. For example, you could replace a set of scalpels with lasers, which are less invasive.

Dr. Eduardo Peña began to work this line of research for over 10 years, "fortunately I think we hit a new, very important line in science, the methods we developed turned out to be very simple to work with and versatile." Hence, he remarked the contributions from his students, who go from social service to Doctorate students, whose effort is being recognized by the international community.

When he talked about the award by IAAM, he highlighted: "I am who writes the articles and give them face, but it is an effort of many people, of my collaborators, both in and outside UG; but, above all, an effort from the guys in our research group."

Among their current projects, he mentioned that one of the greatest challenges for the applications in biology is, for the light to emit the compounds his groups is preparing, displace towards to the red visible part of the spectrum because it is the one that causes less damage to living beings. So, the group of researchers works on modifying the chemical structure of these compounds in such a way that once light hits them, emit in the red or in the nearest infrared.

Another project is oriented to make them soluble in water, because for the applications of advanced materials in biology is very important to achieve it. "Naturally, these compounds are not soluble in aqueous solutions, so we, with what we now of organic chemistry, we can modify the structure of those compounds so they can be soluble in water and therefore can easily integrate in biological systems."

The research group led by Dr. Eduardo Peña Cabrera, is formed by chemists who study synthetic organics, and in the researcher's opinion, one of the most relevant contributions is that they have managed for the compounds they've worked with to generate light in the range of the visible spectrum, from blue, to the nearest to infrared, which implies they have different applications.

About the factors that have allowed his team to position in an international level, he said, a fundamental aspect are the strategic collaborations, "not only inside the University of Guanajuato, but we also have collaborations with scientists in other countries. The research we do is multidisciplinary."

Another important point, is having the National Laboratory of Characterization of Physical Chemical Properties and Molecular Structure, "which has given us many instruments with which we can plan more ambitious projects. We couldn't do that before, now we can aspire, and together with foreign collaborations, to publish in magazines with greater impact; our scientific work diffuses more and it is a scheme where we all win."

An aspect that is nearly not mentioned, but has been very relevant, is that for many years the University of Guanajuato has electronic subscriptions to access the scientific magazines. This way, the researchers can be up to date with the latest in science and can continuously check the scientific literature.

Dr. Eduardo Peña Cabrera is a member of the National Researchers System (SNI), where he just became Level III. He is a member of the academic body of Organic Synthesis, at the Department of Chemistry at the Division of Natural and Exact Sciences of Campus Guanajuato.

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