Research Line: Nowadays, climate change and energy shortage represent some of the greatest challenges for humanity. The use of fossil fuels has a significant adverse impact on the environment and is considered a critical cause of global climate change. Therefore, the development of clean and renewable energy is the key way to meet the increasing global energy requirement and to resolve the environmental problems caused by the overuse of large amounts of fossil fuels.
Hydrogen is regarded as an ultraclean, powerful, environmentally friendly, and promising alternative for meeting future fuel needs. The production of hydrogen by water splitting using sunlight has been proven to be a regenerative, ecofriendly, and inexhaustible approach to solve both the energy crisis and energy related environmental pollution given the natural abundance of water and sunlight. Solar energy has also been harnessed to produce electricity using solar cells. However, the average standard efficiency of photovoltaic devices for electricity generation is 16-17% and the best commercially available is 22%. There is an urgent need for clean and renewable fuel so that the development of good catalysts and its assembly into a cell for the photoproduction of hydrogen is seen as one of the most promising sustainable solutions for our present demands. In these photocatalytic processes, a stable and efficient photocatalyst is the critical factor for the development of efficient devices and thus constitutes a very important and urgent theme to be solved. Over four decades of research, some hundreds of photocatalyst materials have been catalogued. There are mainly metal-based and have been dominated by transition metal oxides and sulfides. Despite the rapid development of these photocatalysts, they still face several significant challenges. Visible-light photoredox catalysis uses visible light as a renewable energy source to promote chemical transformations involving electron transfers. The most used complexes in visible light photocatalysis by their excellent photophysical properties are ruthenium and iridium polypyridyl complexes although their high cost and potential toxicity, causing disadvantages on a big scale. Although great advances have been made in the development of photocatalysts for their application in water splitting, photovoltaic cells, solar energy storage and catalysis, development of new photocatalysts to get more efficient transformations is mandatory and will be the topic of this project.

GOT ENERGY TALENT (GET) program is a highly competitive, merit-based fellowship programme aimed at attracting postdoctoral talent in the field of smart energy.

GET is co-funded by the EU as part of the H2020-MSCA-COFUND programme. GET is led by the University of Alcalá in collaboration with Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC). Moreover, GET is supported by a comprehensive network of other partners, including academic, institutional and industrial organisations that work in smart energy and related fields, as well as in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The fellowships will provide an opportunity for experienced researchers from around the world to spend two years in Madrid, developing their independent research and undertaking training which will help them develop into the next generation of research leaders. Fellows can decide whether to carry out a 24-month advanced research project at the academic host institution (UAH and URJC) or, under certain research lines, to carry out a 12-month advanced research project combined with a 12-month period devoted to applied research in one of the partner host institutions from the non-academic sector. GET offers attractive working conditions: a competitive salary, a budget line for research costs, training and broad visibility for researchers through dissemination events.

Who can apply? Applicants of all nationalities are eligible to apply but must not have resided or carried out their main activity in Spain for over 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Applicants should also be in possession of a PhD or 4 years of full-time equivalent research experience immediately prior to the call deadline.

How to apply: All applications must be submitted via the online system on GET’s website (http://gotenergytalent.uah.es/second-call/). Applicants must identify the research line where they want to be integrated, and get in touch with the research group, in order to get the necessary information to complete the application. GET-COFUND will not accept applications submitted by any other means or applications that do not use the specified templates. The call will be opened until 2nd July 2019 (12:00 Spanish time). Applications will be peer-reviewed after the call deadline and results will be communicated to applicants during December 2019. Fellows should start as soon as possible after the communication of results and no later than May 2020.

For further information, please see http://gotenergytalent.uah.es/second-call/ or email tecnico.cofund@uah.es.