Garcia-Lekue, Aran
Corresponding members
Physicist
Aran Garcia-Lekue (Zornotza, Bizkaia, 1975) is an Ikerbasque Researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC).
She holds a degree in Physical Sciences (Extraordinary Prize, 1998) and a PhD in Material Science and Engineering (European PhD, 2003) from the University of the Basque Country. She conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Liverpool (UK) and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley (USA). In 2007, she joined the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) through the Fellows Gipuzkoa programme and, in 2012, became an Ikerbasque Researcher. Since 2015, she has been teaching on the Master's in Nanoscience at the University of the Basque Country. She is involved in several international collaborations and has been a Mercator Fellow at the University of Kiel in Germany, as well as visiting researcher at the LBNL in Berkeley.
In her doctoral thesis (directed by Pedro Maria Echenique and Jose Maria Pitarke), she conducted theoretical research into the interactions between several metallic bodies. Her post-doctoral research focussed on the development and application of computational tools for simulating nanoscale quantum electronic properties. Her main areas of research over recent years have looked at molecular electronics and small-scale materials, particularly graphene nanostructures highly promising materials for use in nanoelectronics or quantum computing. In 2018, her research group participated in a project on nanoporous graphene which won third place in the Cutting-edge Science Awards (Premio Vanguardia de la Ciencia) 2018 and was selected as Molecule of the Year 2018 by the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Her regular participation in activities aimed at the general public, particularly young people, highlights her commitment to science dissemination and to raising the profile of women in science.
Aran Garcia-Lekue is a corresponding member of JAKIUNDE since the 8th of November 2019, and corresponding member since the 12th of November of 2021.