I am a climate scientist, and my research focuses on understanding and predicting how extreme climate events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and storms will change in the coming years and decades. This involves studying weather and climate processes that drive or amplify such extreme events, and how they are affected by climate variability and long-term climate change related to global warming. I also study the feasibility of land-based approaches to mitigate climate change by removing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and how these mitigation approaches are affected by climate-related risks. I implement my research at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where I co-lead the Climate Prediction Group - a research group currently consisting of 20 postdoctoral researchers, PhD students and technical support staff. 

Ciska Kemper is an astrophysicist, working in an interdisciplinary research area, connecting with chemistry, solid state physics and mineralogy. She is interested in the formation and processing of mineral dust grains in space. She uses ground- and space-based infrared and submillimetre facilities to observe the characteristic signature of different mineralogical components of interstellar dust. She currently focuses on the crystallization and amorphization of silicates. Measuring the crystalline fraction of interstellar silicates can reveal the thermal processing history of the dust grains, as the dust provides a record of the physical conditions it has experienced. She is also interested in silicate nanoclusters, which represent the intermediate phase between the molecular gas and bulk silicate material. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and upcoming capabilities of ground-based millimeter telescopes, detecting this missing link is becoming possible.

My research is inspired by nature and uses its design principles to create materials that seamlessly interface with living matter to develop new paradigms for biomaterials and biomedicine. I focus on introducing new concepts for biointerfaces and “quasi-living” synthetic cells that can harbor selective interactions with cells and tissues. These synthetic cells will enable biologically inspired but augmented or even completely new functions to open new horizons for biomedicine, sensing, and therapeutics. Moreover, this research holds promise to unveil some of the most daunting questions related to the origin of life, the transition from inanimate to living, and the emergence of diseases.