A brief summary of my research career

  • My publication list
  • H-index of 30 (WOS)
  • 5 Invited Book Chapters
  • Over 120 Publications in Internationally Referred Journals (more than 2400 citations according to the Science Citation Index- excluding autocitations) including Science (1), Nature (1), Phys. Rev. Lett. (8), Phys. Rev. B (9), New J. Phys (5), Surf. Sci (17) and others (over 22 as first authors, over 33 as last author).
  • Over 60 Invited Lectures
  • Over 110 Contributed Presentations at International Conferences and Symposia
  • 8 research grants as Principal Investigator
    • B.S. - Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 1990, Top 10% (3.07 out of 3.5)
  • Ph.D. - Physics, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 1995 "Growth of Co on Cu(111): Morphology, Structure and Dynamics in Thin Films"Apto Cum Laude (unanimity)
  • Awards:
    • Fulbright Fellow (FUL97 2608966) (1997 - 1999)
    • Award to the best PhD Thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (1995).
    • Research Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education (1988-1992)
    • Fellowship from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) (1987 - 1988)
  • Employment
    • (2016-now) Senior researcher, Instituto de Quimica Fisica "Rocasolano"
    • (2013-2017) Director of the Instituto de Quimica Fisica "Rocasolano"
    • (2007-2011) Tenured researcher, Instituto de Quimica Fisica "Rocasolano"
    • (2006-2007) Associate Professor, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
    • (2002-2005) Assistant Professor "Ramon y Cajal", Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
    • (2001-2002) Limited Term Employee, Sandia National Laboratories
    • (1999-2000) Postdoctoral Fellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • (1997-1999) Fulbright Fellow for Postdoctoral Studies
    • (1996-1997) Lecturer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    • (1995-1996) Lecturer, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
  • I have also been involved in the spanish equivalent of the AAAS, the AACTE (Association for the advancement of science and technology in Spain).
  • There has been a proliferation of research IDs which show your publications. Mine include:
  • You can also find me at LinkedinResearchgate, Tweeter/X or Bluesky.

History

Formally I started doing research after my undergrad Physics studies. That means we are not counting trying (and failing) to build a CO2 laser as a proxy for the 3-year lab work during the Physics undergrad studies or other previous attempts at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. My PhD, also in Physics and still at the same place, was done under the direction of Prof. Carmen Ocal at the Surface Physics Laboratory (the group leader was and is Prof. Rodolfo Miranda). There,  I had a lot of fun using and fighting with scanning tunneling microscopes. After my PhD thesis (which you can find here), I moved for a first postdoctoral stay with Prof. J. M. Rojo at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. There I taught some freshman physics while I tried to learn about dislocations and to do some physics with my spare time. After that and a short stay in Mexico DF at the UNAM, I moved to California. From 1997 to 2002 I stayed there, at the Sandia National Laboratories/CA. It started as a postdoctoral stay, and ended with me working as a research scientist for the last years. In 2002, I took one of the contracts offered by the Spanish government as a kind of tenure track (a "contrato Ramon y Cajal" -check at the Ramon y Cajal site-), something that with some imagination could be called an Assistant Professor position, "returning" at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. During that time, and also receiving tenure there in 2006 (having a "profesor contratado doctor" position),  I devoted my time to put together a lab (LOMA) at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials (CMAM), and to learn low energy electron microscopy during summers, at Berkeley and Sandia National Labs. In 2007 I moved to the the Instituto de Quimica-Fisica "Rocasolano", part of the CSIC at the Surface Analysis Mossbauer group.

 

Selected publication list

  1. K. Pohl, M.C. Bartelt, J. de la Figuera, N.C. Bartelt, J. Hrbek and R.Q. Hwang. "Identifying the forces responsible for self-assembled nanostructures" Nature 397 (1999), 238.
  2. J. de la Figuera, K. Pohl, O.R. de la Fuente, A.K. Schmid, N.C. Bartelt, C.B. Carter and R.Q. Hwang. "Direct Observation of Misfit Dislocation Glide" Phys. Rev. Lett.86, 3819 (2001).
  3. F. El Gabaly, W. L. Ling, K. F. McCarty, J. de la Figuera "The importance of threading dislocations on the motion of grain boundaries in thin films" Science 308, 1303 (2005).
  4. F. El Gabaly, S. Gallego, M. Carmen Munoz, L. Szunyogh, P. Weinberger, K. F. McCarty, C. Klein, A. K. Schmid, J. de la Figuera "Imaging Spin Reorientation Transitions in Consecutive Atomic Co layersPhys. Rev. Lett.96 147202 (2006), (cond-mat/0512220).
  5. M. Monti, B. Santos, A. Mascaraque, O. Rodriguez la Fuente, M. A. Niño, T. O. Mentes, A. Locatelli, K. F. Mc Carty, J. F. Marco, and J. de la Figuera. “Magnetism in nanometer-thick magnetite”. Phys. Rev. B 85 (2012) 020404(R) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.00.000400 (arxiv 1110.4568). 

 

Research Interests

The main theme of my work has been to understand the behavior and consequences of defects on the surface of a material through the use of imaging (i.e. real space) techniques.

To characterize properly the surfaces one possibility is to resort to Ultra-High-Vacuum experiments. In UHV while I am familiar and have use often the regular surface science techniques (Auger Electron Spectrocoscopy, Low Energy Electron Diffraction, Surface X-ray Diffraction, etc), I have been specially involved with Scanning Probe Microscopies (SPM) and Low Energy Electron Microscopies (LEEM). To such end, I have programmed data-adquisition systems, tested newly built STMs and designed and build them. In the last years, I have been focussing in Low Energy Electron Microscopy, a technique that employs a low energy electron beam to form a magnified image of the surface at high speed. LEEM is a particular example of the abilities of electron microscopies applied to surfaces, and it is specially useful in dynamic studies when coupled to either spin-polarized electron beams (for probing sample magnetization) or diffraction contrast (for following phase transformations) to gather information on the nanoscale. And have discovered Mössbauer spectroscopy. If it has iron, you need it!.