carla.fernandezrico@mat.ethz.ch

Carla Fernandez-Rico

I am scientist born in the vibrant city of Barcelona. The wide range of things that interested me, led me to pursue the Nanoscience and Nanotechology degree at the University Autonomous of Barcelona in 2011.

After being introduced to the world of colloids and nanoparticles, I moved to the Netherlands in 2015 to pursue my Master’s degree in Nanomaterials at Utrecht University, undertaking research in the Van ’t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloidal Chemistry. During the last five months of my master, I joined the Oxford Colloid Group at the University of Oxford as an intern, where I worked on colloidal rods and optical tweezers. In October 2017, I returned to Oxford as a PhD student in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Roel Dullens.

During my doctoral research, I developed a novel system of colloidal particles for studying liquid crystalline materials with confocal microscopy. These particles are quite special because their shape can be tuned from spherical, to a rod-like, to banana-shaped particle. The unique control over their shape allowed us to study the effect of the particles’ shape on their self-assembly properties into condensed phases. As a result of our studies, we unveiled the stability of liquid crystalline phases which were elusive for almost 80 years!

After being awarded the ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2021, I joined the Laboratory of Living and Soft Materials at ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Eric Dufresne. During my Postdoc time, I exploited phase separation processes in polymer matrices to control the structure of elastomers and form micron-sized spherical inclusions or interconnected channel-like morphologies, know as bicontinuous structures. See our Nature Materials’ paper in this work and also a general Perspective we wrote on this topic.

At the end of 2023, I joined the Complex Materials’ Group at ETH Zurich, where I am learning how to use living organisms, like bacteria, to produce materials that have functional properties and are also produced in a sustainable way.

Outside of science, I have passion for sports, especially athletics and Karate, where I competed internationally until 2017. My athletics career, lasted approximately 8 years, and my discipline was 100 m.h. and 400 m.h. My Karate career was shorter (2.5 years), but much more fruitful in terms of results, getting for instance the third place in the European Championship in Russia (2015) and first place in the World Cup in Germany (2015). Find below some pictures of my time as a hurdler and fighter!