After completing my bachelor in Chemistry, I worked for two years as a fellow at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), developing new thermosetting materials with liquid crystal behaviour, as part of a project funded by Shell Development Company. Subsequently, I developed my doctoral thesis which focused on the same topic, also extending to the field of shape-memory materials and, in particular, liquid crystalline elastomers. For this purpose, I carried out a four-month stay at the Institut für Makromolekulare Chemie, Freiburg i Brsg, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Finkelmann, a recognised authority in this field. During the nearly three years following the attainment of my doctorate (PhD in Materials Technology and Industrial plants, 1996), I worked in the Department of Materials and Production Engineering at the University of Naples « Federico II » as a contracted researcher or post-doctoral fellow, developing liquid crystal materials for structural applications, advanced composites and nonlinear optics. Subsequently, I joined as Interim Research Staff Member at the Institute for Composite and Biomedical Materials of the CNR; a year later, I obtained the permanent position of Senior Researcher. During this period, I continued working in the field of liquid crystalline materials and also on the addition of liquid crystal polymers to commercial rubber, in collaboration with Pirelli Coordinamento Pneumatici, aiming to determine the influence of this type of additives on the processing and mechanical properties of the final product. Between 2002 and 2005, I was granted a study leave to develop, on behalf of the CNR, a project on biomimetic liquid crystal materials in the Department of Analytical and Organic Chemistry at the Rovira i Virgili University. In December 2005, I obtained the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Rovira i Virgili University (position secured under the I3 Programme of the Ministry of Education and Science). There, I started a new line of research focused on the application of polymers in the field of membranes (with a special focus on their applications in fuel cells and CO2 capture) and microencapsulation. Since 2017, I lead MEMTEC (Materials, Membrane and Microencapsulation Technology), an interdisciplinary group which includes members from the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Department of Analytical Chemistry and Organic Chemistry of Universitat Rovira I Virgili, and from the Chemical Technology Unit of Fundació EURECAT in Tarragona. Our group has been recognised by the Generalitat de Catalunya as a Consolidated Research Group in 2018 and correspondingly financed in 2021.
In 2021, I obtained the official accreditation for full professorship and I officially occupy this position since March 2026.
I have participated in 27 projects (7 European), serving as project leader in 10 of them, and 8 technology transfer contracts (5 as principal investigator). I published 107 papers and 19 reviews in peer-reviewed journals and 15 book chapters; my H-index is 31 with 3059 total citations (source: Scopus). I have been the Editor of the books: Microencapsulation. Innovative Applications, M. Giamberini, S. Fernandez-Prieto, B. Tylkowski Editors, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2015, 1st and 2nd Edition, ISBN 978-3-11-033187-5 and 978-3-11-064176-9.
I am co-inventor in three families of patents developed with Procter&Gamble.
I have supervised 12 successfully defended doctoral theses. Currently, I am supervising one more. All the doctors trained under my direction are currently developing their professional activities in fields directly or closely related to scientific research or industrial development and innovation.
Among my collaboration with Academia and Industry, it is worth mentioning the ones with: Procter&Gamble Brussel Innovation Center, Laboratorios Bel Cosmetic, ICIQ, Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), IEM Montpellier (France), U. De Lisboa (Portugal), University of Naples “Federico II”, University of Brescia (Italy), UKL (Belgium), ALBA SYNCHROTRON LIGHT SOURCE, Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de València, Italian National Research Council, Max Planck Institute, Germany; Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland.
I have served as Expert Evaluator of research projects for EU in 6FP, for the National Research Council of Romanian Government, for National Center of Science and Technology Evaluation, Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Kazakhstan, for the Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italy and for the Agència Valenciana d’Avaluació i Prospectiva (AVAP) and for the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i Recerca (AGAUR). I have been member of the Editorial and Advisory Board of the journals Energy Today, Physical Sciences Reviews and of the Cambridge Scholars Publishing group.