Crystallography and Mineralogy Professor of the University of Valladolid

During his career, Prof. Pinto has been PhD fellow at the University of Valladolid (Spain) and the University of Bordeaux (France), post-doctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (Italy) for 3 years, and performed research stages at the University of Washington (USA) and Cambridge (UK).

Prof. Javier Pinto is an expert in Materials Science with experience in various production and characterization techniques, including spectroscopic techniques, use of synchrotron radiation and X-ray based techniques. In particular, Dr. Pinto has participated in the development of tomography equipment, image analysis tools and their application to polymeric and archaeological samples, as well as in various measurement campaigns in accelerators. During his PhD, completed in 2014, he helped pioneer the field of nanocellular polymers, producing the first comprehensive screening of nanocellular polymer samples in Europe. Subsequently, he co-directed a doctoral thesis exploring the physical properties of these materials. This thesis obtained outstanding results following the production and characterization approaches previously developed by Prof. Pinto (3 of the most cited articles on the subject internationally). It is worth noting from this stage the first study carried out on the effects of molecular confinement of polymer chains, whose first evidence was provided by Raman spectroscopy. Simultaneously, he expanded his experience as a postdoctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). For 3 years, he developed porous polymeric materials functionalized by nanoparticles, introduced or synthesized by various approaches. These materials have been designed to deal with various contaminants that may be present in water resources (e.g., heavy metals, oil spills, bacteria). In 2017, he rejoined the University of Valladolid, starting a new line of research at this University that has obtained notable results in water treatment and biomedical applications using functional porous polymers, which have been published in high-quality journals (e.g., Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Materials Chemistry B), and has received funding from the State Research Agency (FORWARD, €72,000). In 2018 he obtained an Assistant Professor position and began to apply his experience also in the field of archaeometry, founding in 2019 a new research group on this topic, the “Historical and Archaeological Materials Research Group” (AHMAT) and reached a permanent Professor position in 2022. Under his direction, the AHMAT group has recently obtained two public research projects, one of them at a regional level and another at a national level (full funding over €400,000). These projects are focused on the archaeometric study of ancient glass beads and on the development of new technologies and materials, based on porous polymeric nanocomposites, for the conservation of cultural heritage (this last project involving a consortium with 3 companies coordinated by Prof. Pinto).

Recently, the research group directed by Prof. Pinto, rebranded as “Study, Preservation, and Recovery of the Archaeological, Historical, and Environmental Heritage (AHMAT)”, has received the distinction of “Unidad de Investigación Consolidada” (Consolidated Investigation Unit) by the Regional Government.

In addition to the aforementioned projects, Dr. Pinto has participated in 3 European, 4 national and 3 regional public research projects, as well as 7 industry-funded research projects (total funding: around 3,000,000 Euros). Simultaneously, Prof. Pinto keep deepening on the understanding of the mechanism involved on the production and physical properties of advanced materials such as nanocellular polymers or functional nanocomposites, enhancing or extending their production routes and fields of applications. In particular, in the last years he continues developing new materials for water treatment and biomedical applications, but also for gas separation or energy efficiency.

In addition, during his doctoral and postdoctoral training he obtained the national “FPU” and “Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación” scholarships, respectively. Dr. Pinto has developed an extensive scientific production in the last 10 years (H-Index = 22, 1399 citations (SCOPUS, 28/04/2023)), publishing 40 JCR articles (28 published in Q1 journals), 2 book chapters, contributing to more than 30 oral communications at international conferences and filing two patent applications. He also has extensive experience supervising researchers and students. He is currently supervising two postdoctoral researchers, one researcher trainee, as well as a two PhD students, most of them working on porous polymers and nanocomposites. He has supervised 8 Final Degree Projects, 8 Final Master’s Projects and 1 doctoral student, who was awarded the extraordinary doctoral prize from the University of Valladolid and obtained the European Doctorate mention.