Juan Carlos Gómez Martín

I studied Physics in Granada, Spain. I took my PhD in atmospheric gas-phase halogen photochemistry, kinetics and spectroscopy with Prof. John P. Burrows at the Institute for Environmental Physics and Remote Sensing of the University of Bremen (2002-2006). After a brief post-doc in Bremen, in 2007 I was hired by Prof. John M. C. Plane to carry out laboratory research on photochemistry and gas-to-particle conversion processes of mesospheric and tropospheric relevance at the School of Chemistry of the University of Leeds. In 2009 I moved to Toledo, Spain, where I worked with Alfonso Saiz-Lopez at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), now the AC2 department of the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry (IQF-CSIC). At Toledo, my research focused on the design, construction, development and field deployment of spectroscopy-based instruments for in situ measurements of precursor, active and reservoir halogen species, with implications for tropospheric ozone destruction and new particle formation. In 2012 I moved back to Leeds to work in Prof. Plane’s ERC-AdG project CODITA – Cosmic Dust in the Terrestrial Atmosphere. During this 5-year project, I expanded my laboratory expertise on laser spectroscopy and mass spectrometry and performed spectroscopic, chemical kinetics and phase change experiments relevant for the disintegration of meteoroids in planetary atmospheres and its impacts on atmospheric aerosol. In 2017 I was awarded a Ramon y Cajal fellowship by the Spanish Ministry of Science and moved to Granada (Spain) to join the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucía (CSIC), where I worked on laboratory and remote spectro-photo-polarimetric characterisation of zodiacal, cometary and asteroidal dust, as well as of atmospheric terrestrial aerosols and martian dust . I was appointed as senior scientist at IAA in 2023, where I am currently setting up a new laboratory (SPARKSLAB) to study gas-phase metal chemistry leading to new particle formation relevant in planetary atmospheres and astrophysical environments.