Luís Mafra

Luís Mafra is currently a Principal Researcher and Manager of the solid-state NMR facility at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, University of Aveiro, Portugal. In 2006, he obtained his PhD from University of Caen (Laboratoire de Catalyse et Spectrochimie), France & University of Aveiro, Portugal, working on solid-state NMR spectroscopy. During this period he developed NMR methodologies to study the structure of hybrid materials using 1H high-resolution CRAMPS NMR techniques and methods to observe quadrupolar nuclei. In 2011 he was a Postdoctoral fellow at Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, Mainz, Germany. Published ca. 80 SCI research papers and 5 book chapters and gave ca. 55 talks at invited talks at conferences. Since 2010, he has been involved in technology transfer and collaborative research with multiple private companies. Received various honors & awards, including: 2019 - European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant; 2014 - promoted to Principal Researcher under the national ‘Investigator FCT’ competitive program; 2014 - Adjunct Senior Lecturer honorary title, Sydney University (Australia); 2012 - guest scientist, University of Oviedo, (Spain); 2006 - recipient of Celestino da Costa/Jean Perrin prize; 2009 - António Xavier Bruker prize. He is a member of the editorial board of Solid-state NMR (Elsevier) and regular reviewer of projects from governmental funding agencies of multiple countries. Present Research Interests. Combination of solid-state techniques with XRD and computational methods to study the intermolecular interactions of small molecules (pharmaceuticals) and porous materials for heterogeneous catalysis and gas capture applications.