Luis M. Liz-Marzán got his doctoral title from the University of Santiago de Compostela (1992) and was postdoc at the Utrecht University, and more recently visiting professor at the Tohoku University; University of Michigan; University of Melbourne, and University of Hamburg, as well as at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces.
After holding a chair in Physical Chemistry at the University of Vigo, he is currently Ikerbasque Research Professor and Scientific Director of the Basque Centre of Cooperative Research in Biomaterials (CIC biomaGUNE), in San Sebastián.
Prof. Liz-Marzán serves as a Senior Editor of the ACS journal Langmuir since 2009 and is editorial advisory board member of several chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science journals. He has been President of the Division of Colloids and Interfaces of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (2009-2013). He is co-author of more than 320 publications and 5 patents, with a high citation rate (current h-index = 71) and has received several national and international research awards, including an ERC Advanced Grant (2011-2016). His current interests include nanoparticle synthesis and assembly, nanoplasmonics, and development of nanoparticle-based sensing and diagnostic tools.
Prof. Liz-Marzán has a longstanding record in synthesizing nanoparticles, in special, metallic ones. Beyond synthesis, he concentrated more and more on unusual shapes and arrangement and calculated also their outstanding optical properties. These are distinguished by extremely high local fields which then enabled him to achieve extreme sensitivity in analytical chemistry. The Rhodia prize was awarded to him for his recent achievements in the Raman detection of individual molecules. Thus, he could detect even misfolding or scrambling of prions. In addition, he showed that clever arrangement of nanoparticles can lead to extremely sensitive optical antennae.
Prof. Liz-Marzán has many collaborative projects throughout Europe and has just been appointed scientific director of a rather young institute in the Basque country. He is also engaged in many European projects, partly as leader, partly as provider of nanoparticles. His work there is a strong line to understand processes, mechanisms, local fields and forces and finally to make use of specific properties. He is a leader in nanoscience, which is also reflected in the many awards he has received.