Yolanda Sabater-Algarra

About

Yolanda was born in Novelda (Alicante) in 1995, where she grew up. After finishing high school, she moved to Barcelona, where she obtained a B.Sc. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2017) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and an M.Sc. in Industrial Chemistry and Introduction to Chemical Research (2018).

During 2016, she participated in an Erasmus+ program to carry out her final degree project under the supervision of Dr. Laia Francàs in the laboratory of Prof. James Durrant at Imperial College London.

She then conducted her research under the supervision of Prof. Josep Sedó and Prof. Daniel Ruiz-Molina at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2). After completing her master’s thesis, Yolanda joined CIQUS (University of Santiago de Compostela) as a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Dr. María Giménez-López.

In April 2025, she joined the group of Dr. Helena Shepherd, focusing on the green chemistry of spin-crossover systems and exploring alternative synthesis routes based on mechanochemistry and resonance acoustic mixing.

Research interests

Her doctoral research focused on the study of different types of spin-crossover systems (single crystals, liquid crystals, and nanoparticles). In addition to investigating their switchable properties with temperature, her work explores how to modulate these properties through pressure. In this context, she has specialized in high-pressure techniques, including the use of diamond anvil cells (for Raman spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction) and piston–cylinder-type cells for magnetometry measurements, among several other chemical and physical characterization techniques.