Rocio Semino, a way with words

The good news is still fresh. At the end of December 2021, Rocio Semino learned that she had been awarded a grant from theEuropean Research Council (ERC). When the 37-year-old chemist recounts the months leading up to the selection, it becomes clear that she left nothing to chance.

Weeks of intense writing

The first step—writing her research proposal—was not the most difficult. First, because Rocio Semino loves to write. Not just science, but literature too. The link between "Elucidation of the assembly mechanisms of metal-organic networks," the title of her ERC grant, and poetry is not immediately obvious, but Rocio Semino confirms that her love of writing makes her work easier. Originally from Argentina, she also points out the advantages of her foreign background. "From the bachelor's degree [which takes five years in Argentina] and then on to the doctorate, it is the student who writes their research project. My post-doc in France was my first experience of researching a project that I hadn't written myself."

With her ERC project already "mature " in her mind, she set about writing. Weeks of intense writing followed, during which she worked "all the time " and welcomed the support of her colleagues at the Charles Gerhardt Montpellier Institute, the CNRS, andthe National Institute of Chemistry, as well as the kindness and hard work of Marjo Michon at the DIPA. For the second stage, the oral hearing, Rocio Semino was less in her element. She lost count of the number of times she tested her presentation in front of colleagues. The challenge was to answer the questions of the twelve jury members within the allotted fifteen minutes. "You have to give as many answers as possible, so they have to be short and very precise. But they also have to be understandable to jury members who are not all experts in my field."

"This project brings together everything I've learned."

Over the next five years, Rocio Semino will therefore devote herself to her research on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These porous materials have numerous applications in strategic sectors, including CO2 capture, energy storage, and drug delivery. But while these materials are the stuff of industry dreams, their synthesis still relies on numerous costly and time-consuming trials and errors. This is where her research project comes in. The chemist does not work in a laboratory but on a computer. "By elucidating the mechanisms of assembly using computer models, we can better understand how to synthesize a MOF," explains Semino, who has been involved in modeling since her bachelor's degree.

"This project brings together everything I've learned,"notes the researcher: molecular dynamics, which she studied in particular during her thesis, completed in 2014; advanced methodological studies on modeling and machine learning during her postdoc in Lausanne in 2017-2018; and MOFs during her previous postdoc in Montpellier. "I change my research topics and methodsa lot," Rocio Semino remarks when recounting her career path. This is less to apologize for her inconsistency than to emphasize her desire to explore. The outcome proved her right, as one of the ERC jury's comments was that her profile was ideal for covering all aspects of her project.

Inspiring young female researchers

The ERC is also a turning point in her career. The big change is that she will be leading a team of six people: doctoral students and postdocs, whom she will recruit to carry out this project. She would like the team to be gender-balanced, with the aim of inspiring young female researchers, as the few she encountered during her studies did for her.

While waiting for her program to start by the end of the year, Rocio Semino writes. Not poetry, but all the files necessary to launch her research. To name just one: a request for computing time from major French and European computing centers, the only facilities with the computing power required for her upcoming modeling work.