Rate My Professor Sara López Paz

Sara López Paz is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, leading the López Paz Group dedicated to solid-state chemistry for the discovery and design of new quantum materials. She holds an MSc in Physics and a PhD in Chemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid, where her doctoral research focused on magnetic and superconducting properties of materials. Prior to her current position, she served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, exploring quantum phenomena in van der Waals antiferromagnets and frustrated magnetic systems. Her career trajectory reflects a commitment to advancing inorganic synthesis and characterization techniques to uncover emergent properties in transition metal compounds.

López Paz's research centers on synthesizing complex solid-state compounds using advanced crystal growth, soft chemistry for anion exchange and cation intercalation, and probing structure-property relationships via X-ray and neutron scattering, as well as muon and X-ray spin spectroscopies. Her interests encompass low-dimensional and frustrated magnets, magnetic van der Waals materials, superconductivity, metal-insulator transitions, cuprates, and perovskites. Notable publications include 'Dynamic magnetic crossover at the origin of the hidden-order in van der Waals antiferromagnet CrSBr' (Nature Communications, 2022), 'Quasi 1D electronic transport in a 2D magnetic semiconductor' (Advanced Materials, 2022), 'Synthesis and Anisotropic Magnetic Properties of LiCrTe2 Single Crystals with a Triangular-Lattice Antiferromagnetic Structure' (Journal of Physics: Materials, 2023), 'Triple Magnetic Stacking in an Iron-Containing Cuprate with Cu-Fe-Cu Magnetic Blocks' (Chemistry of Materials, 2024), and 'YBaCuO-type perovskites as potential air electrodes for SOFCs' (Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2021). These works, published in leading journals, demonstrate her impact on understanding quantum magnetism and electronic properties, with contributions cited over 370 times. She has secured major funding, including an Inge Lehmann programme grant, DKK 3,166,819 from the Novo Nordisk Foundation for 'Engineering dimensionality in quantum magnets by chemical design', and participation in a DKK 19 million Villum Infrastructure grant for advanced materials characterization facilities.