Welcome to Our New Humboldt Fellow: Alejandro Cortés Villena Joins the Guldi Group

We are delighted to welcome Alejandro Cortés Villena as a new guest researcher and Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the Guldi Group (Chair of Physical Chemistry I) at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

Alejandro obtained his undergraduate degree in Chemistry in 2017 from the University of Almería (UAL), Spain. He subsequently moved to Valencia to pursue an interuniversity Master’s degree in Sustainable Chemistry at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) between 2017 and 2018. He then joined the Photochemistry Reactivity Group at the Institute of Molecular Science at the University of Valencia (UV), where he conducted research on the synthesis and photophysical properties of photoactive semiconductor nanomaterials. He completed his PhD there in January 2025.

In 2026, Alejandro was awarded a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research at FAU. He joined the Guldi Group on March 2, 2026, where he will carry out his postdoctoral research over the next two years.

His research project focuses on hybrid materials that combine perovskite nanocrystals with acene-based organic molecules to exploit a process called singlet fission, in which a single high-energy photon can generate two excited states. Solar energy technologies still face fundamental efficiency limits due to significant energy losses during light conversion. By investigating the underlying mechanism—how energy is transferred between these components—the project aims to uncover key processes that could enable the development of more efficient next-generation solar cells.

Alejandro will be at FAU from March 2, 2026, to March 1, 2028.

We warmly welcome Alejandro to Erlangen and look forward to the exciting research he will contribute to the Guldi Group and the FAU community.