carla.fernandezrico@mat.ethz.ch
Carla Fernandez-Rico
I am scientist born in the vibrant city of Barcelona. The wide range of things that interested me, led me to pursue the Nanoscience and Nanotechology degree at the University Autonomous of Barcelona in 2011.
After being introduced to the world of colloids and nanoparticles, I moved to the Netherlands in 2015 to pursue my Master’s degree in Nanomaterials at Utrecht University, undertaking research in the Van ’t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloidal Chemistry. During the last five months of my master, I joined the Oxford Colloid Group at the University of Oxford as an intern, where I worked on colloidal rods and optical tweezers. In October 2017, I returned to Oxford as a PhD student in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Roel Dullens.
During my doctoral research, I developed a novel system of colloidal particles for studying liquid crystalline materials with confocal microscopy. These particles are quite special because their shape can be tuned from spherical, to a rod-like, to banana-shaped particle. The unique control over their shape allowed us to study the effect of the particles’ shape on their self-assembly properties into condensed phases. As a result of our studies, we unveiled the stability of some liquid crystalline phases that remained experimentally elusive for almost 40 years!
After being awarded the ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2021, I joined the Laboratory of Living and Soft Materials at ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Eric Dufresne. During my Postdoc time, I exploited phase separation processes in polymer matrices to control the structure of elastomers. See our Nature Materials’ paper in this work and also a general Perspective we wrote on this topic.
In September 2024, I started my group as Group Leader in the Complex Materials’ Group at ETH Zurich after receiving funding from the SNSF under the Ambizione Fellowship scheme. My independent research groups aims at combining soft matter physics concepts with biological systems to establish new fundamental understating of living soft matter and interfaces, as well as provide new tools for sustainable materials design.
In fall 2026, I will move with my group to Vienna to start as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Soft Matter Physics at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). There, we will launch the Soft and Biofabricated Materials Lab!
Outside of science, I have passion for sports, especially athletics and Karate, where I competed internationally until 2017. My athletics career, lasted approximately 8 years, and my discipline was 100 m.h. and 400 m.h. My Karate career was shorter (2.5 years), but much more fruitful in terms of results, getting for instance the third place in the European Championship in Russia (2015) or first place in the World Cup in Germany (2015). Find below some pictures of my time as a hurdler and fighter!
