Leoní A. Barrios Moreno
Serra Húnter Lecturer of the Department of Inorganic and Organic Chemistry,
Inorganic Chemistry Section
Universitat de Barcelona
LabMolDesign Senior Scientist
She obtained the Chemistry Degree in 2001 at Universidad de Los Andes (Mérida-Venezuela), by means of a fellowship from the Ministry of Education (Venezuela), under the supervision of Ms Sci. Marisela Reyes and Dr. Bernardo Fontal. During this time, her work was focused on the synthesis of amines employing Ru complexes as catalysts. She obtained the PhD in 2006 thanks to a FONACIT fellowship, under the supervision of Dr. Lindora D´Ornellas and Dr. Rubén Machado, sharing the activities of the doctoral thesis between IVIC and the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Caracas-Venezuela). During this period, the goal of her work was centered on the synthesis of nanoparticles of transition metals stabilized with nitrogenated organic compounds, as a way to catalyze the hydrogenation reactions of olefins and aromatic molecules. As part of her doctoral formation, she did a research stay in 2005 at the Universitat de Barcelona, financed by special FONACIT fellowship, under the supervision of Dr. Narcís Homs and Dr. Pilar Ramirez de la Piscina, developing catalysts supported on inorganic oxides, training on the application of a great variety of techniques like DRIFT, XPS, X-Ray, Electronic Microscopy of High resolution, etc.
Since 2007 until 2009, she was a part of the Grup d’Interaccions Magnetiques, led by Dr. Joan Ribas. In this period, her work was focused on the design and synthesis of ligands for the preparation of functional coordination complexes.
In 2009, she spent three months as visiting Faculty at Monash University (Australia), in the Molecular Magnetic Materials group led by Prof. Keith S. Murray, synthesizing Schiff Bases organic compounds and continuing the design and synthesis of new coordination complexes.
In 2012, she was invited as Visting Scholar at the Molecular Materials & Magnetism led by Prof. Rodolphe Clérac at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, in Bordeaux. Also, in 2015, she was invited as Visiting Scholar at the Long Group, University of California Berkeley, led by Prof. Jeff Long.
In 2023 and 2012, she joined the organizing committee of the 1st Meeting of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry of the Catalan Society of Chesmistry and the Vth International Conference on Molecular Materials (MOLMAT 2012), respectively.
She was working as a Scientific Editor and Scientific Conference Manager at MDPI, since 2016 to 2017.
Since 2009 until 2023, she was a member of the GMMF Group leaded by Prof. Guillem Aromí and currently, she is a Serra Húnter Lecturer at the recently founded LabMolDesign group and her reasearch is focus on the design and the synthesis of specific new organic ligands and coordination complexes with application in the fields of quantum computing and the spin transition, and also, she is Scientific Editor at the Science Squared Association, founded by Prof. Patrick Gamez.