Biography
Prof. David Fairen-Jimenez is a Professor of Molecular Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, where he leads the Adsorption & Advanced Material Laboratory (AAML His research focuses on the application of porous materials, such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), in energy applications and nanoscale drug delivery. His expertise combines 1) synthesis and engineering of novel nanomaterials, 2) molecular modelling, 3) drug delivery processes for cancer treatment, and 4) sustainable industrial applications. He leads a multidisciplinary team of 20 researchers, including PhD students and post-docs. In addition to his academic role, he is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Immaterial, a company focused on the development of MOFs for carbon capture and hydrogen storage, and CEO at Vector Bioscience Cambridge, which utilizes MOFs for targeted cancer drug delivery. David’s work has attracted significant funding, including a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, A European Innovation Council (EIC) transition Award and various industrial collaborations with major companies. He focused on bridging the gap between fundamental research and commercial applications, advancing innovations in environmental sustainability and healthcare. To date, David has published 135 papers and filed 10 patents (citations, 13800+; h-index, 62) and has given many invited seminars and lectures at conferences and universities around the world.
BSc, Chemistry, Universidad de Alicante (Spain), 2002
PhD, Chemistry, Universida de Granada (Spain), 2006
RSC Barrer Award, 2017
ERC Consolidator Grant, 2017
Research
I am leading the Adsorption & Advanced Materials Lab. Research website can be found here.
Our research concerns the study of the molecular mechanisms that control adsorption processes in porous materials. We are particularly interested in drug delivery systems, where nanotechnology has a fundamental impact to revolutionise cancer diagnosis and therapy. We are also interested in the use of novel porous materials for the necessary shift from today’s fossil-based energy economy to a more sustainable economy based on hydrogen and renewable energy, linked to the carbon capture to mitigate the effects of global warming. Our objective is to evaluate new strategies in the study of adsorption processes, the study and design of new porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and to develop new methods in the prediction of their performance.
In our work, we combine molecular simulation techniques such as grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study adsorption and diffusion phenomena with experimental techniques that include gas adsorption, confocal microscopy, cell cultures, calorimetry, neutron and X-Ray diffraction and small-angle X-Ray scattering.
