IQTC Women: Carme Sousa
Carme Sousa graduated in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona in 1989 and obtained the PhD in Chemistry at the same University in 1994 receiving the Extraordinary Doctorate Award (1995). The thesis was supervised by Dr. Francesc Illas and was the starting point of a new research line on the study of the electronic structure of metal oxides. During the completion of the Doctoral Thesis, she received first a PhD scholarship and later a Teacher Assistant contract (1992-1996). In the period 1994-1996 she stayed as a postdoctoral fellow at the Materials Science Center of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) working with Profs. W. C. Nieuwpoort and R. Broer. Subsequently, she rejoined the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Barcelona through a research contract and Associate Professor contract (1997-2001). In 2001 she was selected in the first call of the Ramón y Cajal program to work in the study of excited states in condensed matter systems in the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Barcelona. In 2003, she obtained a position as Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Barcelona, and since 2020 she is Full Professor at the Materials Science and Physical Chemistry Department. During both the predoctoral and postdoctoral periods she stayed at various international research centers. She visited the University of Milan (Italy) several times and the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).
Her research is mainly focused on the study of the electronic structure and optical properties of materials with strong electronic correlation effects. She is currently working in two different research lines: (i) study of magnetic properties induced by radiation in materials containing transition metals. The theoretical description of these materials permits to obtain a complete description of the photoinduced process hardly accessible experimentally (absorption processes, deactivation, spin transitions, concomitant structural changes, dynamics of the photocycle); (ii) study of the optical properties of molecules, clusters and highly correlated materials. This study includes the analysis of the structural and electronic properties of the excited states of clusters of different sizes and defects and impurities in solids and surfaces.
She has a long experience in teaching in both Chemistry and Materials Engineering degrees, as well as in several Master and Doctorate programs. Additionally, she has involvement in university management, including the secretariat of the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Barcelona from 2013 to 2016.
In her spare time, Carme likes walking in the countryside, cooking, reading, go to the opera and being with family and friends.