Carmen works on the development of metrology standards for state-of-the-art and next-generation battery technologies. She is an inorganic electrochemist specialised in functional electrodes for batteries and other energy generation and storage devices.
Carmen currently works on the development of standard test protocols for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries containing new, environmentally friendly cathode (positive electrode) materials.
She actively participates in scientific communication with peers and the public through activities such as science-themed summer camps for children and young people, laboratory open houses, seminars and conferences. Throughout her career she has also been active in promoting effective intercultural communication, diversity, and inclusion in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.
Carmen has contributed on organising committees for several international scientific meetings and acts as a frequent peer reviewer for the Journal of Power Sources, for which she has reviewed more than forty scientific papers in the field of electrochemical energy generation and storage.
Carmen has a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Purdue University (USA) where she specialised in non-aqueous electrochemistry and photocatalytic water splitting. Subsequently she held post-doctoral appointments at Argonne National Laboratory (USA), where she initiated research on metallic lithium electrodes, and at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, ZSW (Stuttgart, Germany), where she worked on post-mortem analysis of commercial lithium-ion batteries. Later, Carmen led the metal-air battery programme at CICenergiGUNE (Spain), and, as a Senior Scientist in the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI-HBKU, Qatar), contributed to lab commissioning and research program initiation for lithium-ion and lithium-sulfur batteries. She joined the Electrochemistry Group at NPL in February 2022.