Dr Esther Garcia-Tunon Blanca PhD

Personal Statement

Esther has been a Lecturer in the Materials Innovation Factory and the School of Engineering within the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, at the University of Liverpool since February 2017. Before that she was a research associate in the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics (CASC) at Imperial College London, where she arrived in October 2011 with a Barrie de la Maza fellowship. She has a degree in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Science from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Esther’s research in processing and manufacturing is at the interface between Engineering, Chemistry and Materials Science. Her main research fields are ceramics, colloidal processing of ceramics and graphene, rheology of complex fluids, and additive manufacturing. The general scope is the development of flexible, water based and robust processing approaches of ceramics and carbon materials to create objects with controlled architecture at multiple scale lengths (from cm to nm). Her publication record includes papers in different topics, from synthesis of biomaterials and very deep crystallographic studies to colloidal processing, structural ceramics and 3D printing of graphene. A video featuring recent work on 3D printing of graphene is available in youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB8x1yEVn-0). The work itself, published in Advanced Materials, was the first paper on graphene 3D printing.

03/2012-01/2017 Research Associate in the Centre for Advanced Structural Materials, Imperial College London
10/2011-03/2012 Postdoctoral research fellow of the Barrie Foundation
06/2011-09/2011 Postdoctoral Researcher, Galician Institute of Ceramics, University of Santiago de Compostela
12/2007-06/2010 “María Barbeito” Predoctoral Contract of the “Consellería de Innovación e Industria” of Galician Government, and the European Fund

EDUCATION
02/14/2011 PhD in Chemical Engineering, Santiago of Compostela University, Galician Institute of Ceramics, Spain
26/09/2005 Degree in Chemical Engineering. Santiago of Compostela University, USC. School of Engineering. Santiago de Compostela, Spain

AWARDS
Undergraduate Fellowship awarded by Ministry of Science (BSc Chemical Engineering) 2005-2006
Research Fellowship awarded by Government of Galicia (PhD Materials Science) 2006-2010
Fundacion Pedro Barrie de la Maza Fellowship (Postdoctoral Research Fellow) 2011-2012
Best oral presentation in the 7th Postdoctoral Symposium at the Department of Materials, Imperial College London