Prof. Tomás Torres Cebada
Tomás Torres is Director of the Institute of Advanced Research in Chemical Sciences (IAdChem), Professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Autonoma University of Madrid (UAM) and Associate Senior Scientist of the IMDEA Nanociencia. Doctor in Chemistry (1978) by the UAM, he carried out postdoctoral stays in the Department of Organic Chemistry and Spectroscopy of the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry of Martinsried, Munich (Prof. Wolfram Schäfer, 1978-1980) as a fellow of the Max-Planck Society, and in the Institute of General Organic Chemistry of the CSIC-Department of Organic Chemistry of the UAM (1980-1981), within the first class of "Reincorporation Fellows". He worked in the Department of Chemical Research of the company Abelló, S.A./ Merck, Sharp and Dohme (1981-1985) in Madrid as Senior Researcher. In 1984 he obtained a position as Associate Professor and joined the UAM in 1985. In 2000 he became Professor of Organic Chemistry.
He leads a research group of 30 people, and has published over 470 articles and reviews and 41 patents (27 licensed), and has supervised 40 dissertations.
He has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines (John Wiley and Sons) (1997-2006) and is an Associated Editor of the same journal since 2006. Torres belongs to the Editorial Board of Chemical Society Reviews (RSC, United Kingdom, 2015) and is a member of the International Advisory Board of Chemical Communications (RSC, UK, 2012-), among other journals He is a member of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (Germany), the American Chemical Society (USA), the Electrochemical Society (USA), and the Royal Society of Chemistry of Spain.
In 2016 he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the Miguel Hernández University of Elche and received the Linstead Career Award in Phthalocyanine Chemistry by the Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines. In 2017 he was distinguished as Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and was appointed Visiting Professor of the University of Kyoto and the University of Kuwait. Also in 2017 he was elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and received the "Miguel Catalán" Research Prize of the Community of Madrid. In 2018 he was awarded the Elhuyar-Goldschmidt Prize of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker of Germany and has been elected Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (USA).
Research Lines
The group has been working in synthetic organic chemistry in areas ranging from pharmaceutical chemistry to the development of new organic materials and the study of their optical properties for applications in optoelectronics and organic solar cells, and more recently he has focused on areas of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
The group has been funded with 10 EU projects and 12 more by other international and national agencies in the field of stable and low-cost organic solar cell technologies. In this connection, the group has made extraordinary advances in the preparation of photosensitizers for robust dye sensitized solar cells, like the phthalocyanine named TT1, which has become an obliged reference in the field, and the development of subphthalocyanine n-type materials as alternative to C60 derivatives as acceptors in organic solar cells. The group is opening his research interest also to the Nanomedicine area. Thus, the EU has funded a major project entitled (CosmoPHOS), in which the group is playing a crucial role in the preparation of photosensitizers linked to nanoparticles.
Relevant publications
Chem Rev. 2014, 114, 2192. Adv. Energy Mater. 2014, 4, 1301413. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 12914. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 2543. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2015, 54, 7688. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 8991. Nano Lett. 2015, 15, 1245. ACS Nano 2016, 10, 1565. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2016, 55, doi: 10.1002/anie.201601258.