Congratulations Daniel Hermida Merino!

Daniel Hermida Merino, beamline scientist of the SAXS/WAXS station of DUBBLE, has obtained his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) with a dissertation on the "Study of the structure-properties relationship of polymeric materials using coupled techniques" at the Laboratoire Matériaux Optiques, Photonique et Systèmes of the University of Lorraine (France).

In France, Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) is the accreditation to supervise research and is the highest academic qualification, earned after obtaining a PhD. It grants accreditation to supervise research (e.g. PhD thesis).

The main focus of Daniel Hermida research is the study of the structure-property relationships in the soft matter area in different mediums such as bulk, solution as well as thin films. Particularly, he has developed his scientific in-house research activity, conducting scattering experiments both in transmission and grazing angle mode, in combination with several spectroscopies and mechanical techniques in the polymeric field such as polymer crystallization, self-assembled supramolecular polymers, advanced functional polymeric systems and metal-organic hybrid systems. As a researcher working on a leading scientific infrastructure (ESRF), Daniel Hermida has acquired an outstanding knowledge at the forefront of X-ray instrumentation and thus, has benefited from close interaction with the most prominent research groups in materials science, specifically soft condensed matter, in the Netherlands and Europe. This has encouraged him to develop novel sample environments and performed cutting edge X-ray experiments in combination with several other leading techniques in a soft matter such as microscopy, calorimetry, spectroscopy, rheology. Currently,  Daniel Hermida has focused his research on the development and characterization of novel biosource block-copolymers with biocompatible blocks. Novel advanced biopolymers are ideal candidates with applications in vital areas of the biomedical or pharmaceutical field when coupled with drugs and key metallic nanoparticles.

Many Congratulations!

Top image: Daniel Hermida Merino during his dissertation at the University of Lorraine.