Dr Antonio Benayas is currently a tenure track-researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM, Spain); he is also affiliated to “Ramón y Cajal” Health Research Institute. Dr Benayas´ research is mainly oriented to the development of near infrared nanoprobes for biomedical applications, luminescence thermometry and manometry, and plasmonic nanoparticles acting as optically activated heaters.

Dr Benayas obtained his PhD in Physics of Light and Matter (UAM) by late 2012, upon several years of work on laser crystalline materials and waveguides. He then shifted his research interests to nanoscience, spending four years as postdoctoral fellow at Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (Montreal, Canada); funded among other agencies by Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Breast Cancer Society of Canada. By early 2017, Dr Benayas was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie (MSCA) fellowship by the European Commission, thus conducting a three-year project on lanthanide-based nanomaterials for imaging. He carried out his investigations between Stanford School of Medicine (USA) and the Materials Institute of University of Aveiro (Portugal). By 2020, Dr Benayas was back at his alma mater, (UAM), getting into the competitive Talent Attraction program implemented by the regional government of Madrid.