Rate My Professor Nuria Garcia-Araez

Professor Nuria Garcia-Araez is a Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. She earned a first-class degree in Chemistry from the University of Alicante, Spain, in 2002, followed by a PhD cum laude in single-crystal electrochemistry from the same institution in 2007, supervised by Prof. Juan Feliu and Prof. Victor Climent, in collaboration with Prof. Jacek Lipkowski. After her doctorate, she held postdoctoral fellowships, including a Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. In 2011, she took a senior scientist position in Prof. Petr Novak's group at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, focusing on lithium-air batteries. She joined the University of Southampton in 2012 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 2023. Her multidisciplinary background spans fundamental electrochemistry and in-situ characterization techniques.

Nuria Garcia-Araez investigates the mechanisms of battery reactions to advance next-generation rechargeable batteries, with emphasis on Li-ion, Li-sulfur, solid-state, textile batteries, and innovative lithium production methods from brines. She leads numerous research projects funded by EPSRC, the European Union, and the Royal Society, including Faraday Institution Beyond Li Ion initiatives, Roll-2-Roll manufacture of multilayer solid-state batteries, Sustainable heterogenoUs e-textileS for impercepTible humAn INterfaces (SUSTAIN), and a highly versatile selective approach for lithium production in collaboration with Professor Philip Bartlett. She has received nine academic prizes, notably the Best Spanish Young Electrochemist award by CIDETEC in 2013 and an EPSRC Early Career Researcher Fellowship in 2016. Key publications encompass 'Two electrolyte decomposition pathways at nickel-rich cathode surfaces in lithium-ion batteries' (Energy & Environmental Science, 2022), 'Differences in interfacial reactivity of graphite and lithium metal battery electrodes investigated via operando gas analysis' (The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2024), 'Combined electrochemical, XPS, and STXM study of lithium nitride as a protective coating for lithium metal and lithium–sulfur batteries' (ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2023), and 'Core-shell structured LiFePO₄/C nanocomposite battery material for lithium production from brines' (Electrochimica Acta, 2024). She teaches physical chemistry courses specializing in electrochemistry and batteries and accepts applications from PhD students.