User:DrPaunC/sandbox

Jacinto Sá (born 1979 in Louredo, Santa Maria da Feira) is a Portuguese chemist specialised in plasmonics, X-ray spectroscopy and catalysis. He is a professor at Uppsala University's Department of Chemistry-Ångström, Physical Chemistry division, where he leads the Plasmonics research group.

Career
Jacinto Sá studied the Chemistry field of analytical chemistry at Universidade de Aveiro and received his Master's degree in 2003. After a year of traineeship at TU Wien, he moved to the University of Aberdeen to do his PhD in Heterogeneous Catalysis and Surface Science, which he concluded in 2007. In 2007, he joined the CenTACat unit at Queen’s University Belfast to work as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Robbie Burch and Prof. Christopher Hardacre. In 2010, he joined the group of Prof. Jeroen A. van Bokhoven at ETH Zurich and Paul Scherrer Institute as a scientist. In 2013, he worked as a senior scientist under the mentorship of Prof. Majed Chergui at EPFL and Paul Scherrer Institute. He spent six months as a visiting scientist at TU München before being appointed simultaneously at Uppsala University and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2014 as a tenure-track assistant professor. In 2015, he got his Habilitation from Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he became Docent (qualified teacher) in Physical Chemistry at the Uppsala University. In 2020, he was appointed Full Professor in Physical-Chemistry at Uppsala University.

Research
Jacinto Sá's multidisciplinary research has three main pillars: catalysis, plasmonics and operando spectroscopy, including ultrafast spectroscopy and photon-in photon-out X-ray spectroscopy. Sá's research group focuses on the fundamental understanding and proof of concept of experimental devices for light-energy harnessing, conversion, and storage. In particular, his group develops plasmonic photo devices for artificial photosynthesis, photoredox catalysis and transparent photovoltaics. His group has pioneered many in situ and operando spectroscopy approaches to study (photo-)catalytic systems in real-time and working conditions.

Distinctions
In 2018, Jacinto Sá founded the start-up Peafowl Plasmonics (formerly Peafowl Solar Power AB), with whom he won the 2019 SKAPA-Priset, Uppsala region, most significant innovation award in memory of Alfred Novel; the 2020 Startup4Climate and the Attractive Innovation Award in 2018. Peafowl Plasmonics AB was also in the NyTeknik list 33, (2020 & 2023), which selects Sweden’s Hottest 33 startups. Individually, he was the recipient of the Lutteman Foundation Prize (2018), Sweden awarded to a “reader of high distinction” within the arts and sciences and the Joseph Wang Award for outstanding young researcher in nanomaterials (2015).