Rocio Semino, a flair for the formula

Rocio Semino is a researcher at the Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier. Last December, she was awarded a 1.35 millionEuropean Research Council (ERC) grant for her work on metallo-organic networks. Portrait of a chemist who wields the art of synthesis... without a test tube!

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

Intense weeks of writing

The first step - writing her research project - wasn't the most difficult. Firstly, because Rocio Semino loves to write. Not just science, but literature too. The link between " Elucidation of the assembly mechanisms of metallo-organic networks ", the title of her ERC, and poetry may not be immediately obvious, but Rocio Semino confirms that her taste for writing facilitates her work. Originally from Argentina, she also points to the strengths of her foreign background. " As early as the bachelor's degree [which takes 5 years in Argentina] and then the doctorate, it's the student who writes the research project. My post-doc in France was my first research experience on a project I hadn't written myself."

With her ERC project already " mature " in her head, she threw herself into writing. Weeks of intense writing in which she worked " all the time", and during which she praised the support of her colleagues at the Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier, the CNRS and theInstitut National de Chimie, as well as the kindness and hard work of Marjo Michon at DIPA. For the second stage, the oral audition, Rocio Semino is less in her element. She has lost count of the number of times she has tested her presentation in front of colleagues. The challenge is to answer the questions of the twelve members of the jury in the allotted fifteen minutes. "You have to give as many answers as possible, which means short, precise answers. But also comprehensible to jurors who are not all experts in my speciality."

"This project brings together everything I've learned.

Over the next five years, Rocio Semino will be concentrating on his research into metal-organic networks (MOFs). These porous materials have numerous applications in strategic sectors: CO2 capture, energy storage, drug carriers... But if these materials are the stuff of industry dreams, their synthesis still relies on numerous costly and time-consuming trial-and-error processes. That's where her research project comes in. For the chemist doesn't work in the laboratory, but on the computer. " By elucidating assembly mechanisms using computer models, we can better understand how to synthesize an MOF ", explains the chemist who has been modelling since her bachelor's degree.

" This project brings together everything I've learned ," remarks the researcher: molecular dynamics studied in particular during her thesis, obtained in 2014; advanced methodological studies on modeling and machine learning during her post-doc in Lausanne in 2017-2018, or MOFs during her previous post-doc in Montpellier. " I change my research themes and methods a lot," remarks Rocio Semino as she recounts her career path. Less to apologize for her inconstancy than to underline her desire to explore. The outcome proved her right, since one of the ERC jury's comments was her ad hoc profile to cover all aspects of her project.

Inspiring young female researchers

The ERC is also a turning point in her missions. The big news is that she is taking on the management of a team of six people: doctoral students and post-docs, whom she will be recruiting to carry out this project. She would like the team to be evenly divided between men and women, with a view to inspiring young female researchers in the same way as the all-too-few women she met during her studies.

While waiting for her program to get underway by the end of the year, Rocio Semino is writing. Not poetry, but all the files needed to launch her research. To name just one: a request for computing time from the major French and European computing centers, the only facilities with the computing power to match her forthcoming modeling.