About me
Rafael Lucena is full professor of Analytical Chemistry. He studied Chemistry at the University of Córdoba, getting his BSc with an extraordinary end-of-studies award. His Thesis (supervised by Prof. Cárdenas, Gallego, and Valcárcel) was focused on the development of multiparametric analyzers. It was presented in 2006 with European mention and doctoral award.
From September to December 2003, Rafa spent three months in the group of Pr. Bernhard Lendl at the Technical University of Vienna (Austria) learning the basics of Sequential Injection Analysis and Infrared Spectroscopy. From July to October 2005, he worked in the group of Pr. Wolfgang Lindner at the Central University of Vienna. In these three months he was working, under the supervision of Dr. Norbert Maier, in the determination of Ochratoxin A in different foodstuffs by high-performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection.
Up to date, Rafael has coauthored more than 141 scientific articles (h-index: 38, Scopus) dealing with different analytical aspects although microextraction techniques are the main core of his research. He has co-edited one special volume in Anal. Bioanal. Chem. journal, an e-book, and a book on the topic.
He teaches different facets of Analytical Chemistry in several degrees (Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, and Food Chemistry) and Masters. In this sense, he has been involved in the Erasmus Mundus Master in Forensic Sciences organized by three European academic institutions. Currently, he is participating in the Plurilingualism Program of the University of Cordoba, which involves teaching in English to national and international students. Rafael has directed 9 Ph.D. Thesis. Currently, he is supervising 4 Thesis, one of them in co-tutelle with the University of Tunis el Manar (Tunisia).
Rafael is the secretary of the Instituto Químico para la Energía y el Medioambiente (IQUEMA), an organization that involves more than 125 researchers in different areas of Chemistry. Also, he has been involved in organizing several meetings like NANOUCO, a monographic conference on Nanochemistry.
He also acts as a reviewer in many journals and project evaluator for some organizations. He is an associate editor of the journal Advances in Sample Preparation (Elsevier)
Rafael has been extensively working on developing new microextraction techniques and materials to be used in the analytical sample preparation context. He is entirely aware of the responsibility (social, environmental) of the research, and in the last years, his research has been focused on the design of simple and cheap (easily transferable to other laboratories, no matter their resources) materials based on lignocellulosic (sustainable) substrates. The reuse and recycling of polymer residues and the design of remediation approaches (based on sorption or photocatalysis) can be highlighted as his contribution to reducing the environmental impact of Chemistry.