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IQTC Women: Mercè Deumal


Mercè Deumal completed an Erasmus MSc (1994-95) with Prof. Robb at King’s College London (KCL, UK), and pursued her doctoral research with Prof. Novoa at the Molecular Materials Structure Group (GEM2, UB). After her PhD award in 1999, she carried out postdoctoral research in Prof. Robb’s group (1999-2001, Research Associate, ROPA-EPSRC, KCL, UK), where she developed and implemented a bottom-up work procedure based on first principles to study magnetism in molecular crystals. After her postdoctoral research at KCL, she re-joined the UB as Ramón y Cajal Researcher (2001-05) and as Associate Professor (2006-2019), being nowadays Full Professor at the Materials Science and Physical Chemistry Department. From 2018, Dr Deumal is the coordinator of the interuniversity doctoral program on Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modeling at UB.

Her research is framed in the field of Material Science and Computational Chemistry, and focuses on multifunctional molecular materials: purely organic magnetic crystals, transition metals or charge transfer complexes, switchable and bistable compounds, low dimensional magnets, spin canting materials, metamagnets and organic conductors. Recently, Machine Learning methodologies have been implemented to study the magnetic response in molecule-base materials. The research undertaken in this field aims at preparing novel molecules and materials to implement them into electronic devices, to realize low cost and low-power memory devices/switches, to encode information at the molecular level, to move towards device miniaturization or for application in non-linear optics, sensors and energy storage. It thus follows that any single achievement conducted in the field of molecular materials will be of capital importance to future societal demand.

image from Deumal’s group webpage

She actively collaborates with several international prestigious research groups, both experimental and theoretical. All main findings are published in high-impact journals and presented at national and international conferences

In her spare time, she enjoys being with family and visiting friends, hiking in the countryside or in the mountains, reading a good book, listening to music (and singing along), going to the cinema … and resting at home.