The Rectory Commission of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC), research centre of the University of Valencia Science Park (PCUV), made up of representatives of the two co-holder institutions of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (UV and CSIC), agreed at its last meeting to propose the members of the new management team of the centre
The new director is Sergio Pastor Carpi, a research scientist at CSIC who began his scientific career with a PhD in UV in 1998 and two post-doctoral placements funded by the European Commission at SISSA in Trieste (Italy) and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich (Germany). He joined the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC) in Valencia with a new European postdoctoral contract, followed by another from the Ramón y Cajal program until starting his career as a CSIC scientist in 2008. Member of IFIC’s AHEP group, his field of research is theoretical astroparticle physics, a discipline that straddles elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. In particular, Pastor studies aspects related to the role of neutrinos in different astrophysical and cosmological scenarios. He has served as deputy director of IFIC in two previous phases (2013-2015 and 2023-2025).
The first vice-director of the institute is Javier Vijande Asenjo, professor in the department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics at the University of Valencia where their research combines fundamental physics, advanced simulations and direct collaboration with hospitals and clinical centres. Its work focuses on optimizing the safety and effectiveness of key techniques in cancer treatment, such as brachytherapy and external radiation therapy, in close collaboration with leading institutions and organizations such as the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Director of the IRIMED Medical Physics Group, dedicated to improving and personalizing radiation therapy treatments.
For her part, the CSIC’s chief scientist Emma Torró Pastor is the new deputy technical director of this center located in the academic scientific area of the University of Valencia Science Park. After completing her doctoral thesis at the IFIC, focused on the search for new physics in the ATLAS experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN, she was Research Associate at the University of Washington in Seattle (United States) and returned to IFIC with a project of excellence from the CIDEGENT programme. Her research focuses on the search for new particles with long half-lives in both ATLAS and MATHUSLA, a proposal for a new detector for the high luminosity phase of the LHC, among other entities, and is very involved in activities of dissemination, communication and mentoring, trying to normalize the work of scientific researcher especially for younger staff.
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The management team is completed by Lola Cortina Gil, who continues as deputy director of innovation and transfer, coordinating the IFIC’s Scientific Unit for Business Innovation (UCIE). Cortina joined the institute in 2023 as a scientific researcher at CSIC and is a professor on leave of absence from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), where she worked since 2000 after completing her doctorate at GANIL and the University of Caen (France) and a post-doctoral period at the GSI centre in Darmstadt (Germany). An expert in experimental nuclear physics, she established at USC a research line on nuclear structure and dynamics using exotic relativistic beams. She led the development of the CALIFA calorimeter (2009-2017) and was spokesperson for the R3B experiment between 2017 and 2025. She has also developed a programme of applied physics in the detection of natural radioactivity and radon which led to patents, industrial collaborations and the creation of a spin-off company.
Fuente: IFIC
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