Mónica Giménez Marqués, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and group leader of Crystal Engineering Lab (CEL) at the Institute of Molecular Science of the Universitat de València (ICMol), has been awarded the 2026 Young Researcher Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ) in the “Group Leader” category.

Born in Valencia in 1984, Giménez Marqués earned a degree in Chemistry and completed the Master’s Degree in Nanoscience and Molecular Nanotechnology at the Universitat de València. Her research training began in the field of coordination chemistry and molecular magnetism, under the supervision of Eugenio Coronado, and culminated in a PhD from the same university in 2013.

After this first stage, she redirected her career towards porous metal-organic framework (MOF) materials. She first joined the Lavoisier Institute in Versailles, France, working with Dr C. Serre and Dr P. Horcajada, where she contributed to the pioneering use of these materials in biomedicine and biotechnology. Later, in 2015, she joined the Institut des Matériaux Poreux in Paris with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship focused on the development of heterometallic MOFs and their application in heterogeneous catalysis. During this period, she was selected to attend the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

In 2018, she returned to ICMol as a Juan de la Cierva researcher, ranked first nationwide in chemistry. One year later, she began her career as an independent researcher with the support of the Junior Leader Incoming Fellow programme of the “la Caixa” Foundation, through which she promoted a line of research focused on the development of nanostructured MOFs and their derivatives.

Since 2020, she has led the Crystal Engineering Lab at ICMol as a Ramón y Cajal researcher. Her team works on the design, synthesis and advanced characterization of porous hybrid materials to study their fundamental properties and explore applications in fields such as energy, the environment and biomedicine.

Throughout her career, Giménez Marqués has received several distinctions, including the Young Talent Award of the Valencian Community (2018), the City of Algemesí Scientific-Technical Award (2019), the RSEQ-Sigma-Aldrich Young Researcher Award (2021), and the Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators from the BBVA Foundation (2022).

This new award granted by the RSEQ recognises both a well-established scientific career and the leadership of a benchmark research line in the field of porous materials and crystal engineering.