Antón Rivas Dapena

Antón Rivas Dapena was born in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia (Spain) in 1996. He lived in Lugo, where he completed his elementary and high school education.

After finishing his studies in high school, Antón moved to Barcelona in 2014. There, he studied for his Bachelor’s degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, with a focus on nanomaterials for biomedical applications. During this time, he completed two research stays at the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), where he worked on photochromic molecules for smart optical materials and coordination polymer nanoparticles for photodynamic therapy applications.

After obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in 2018, he studied for his Master’s degree in Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences, at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He was awarded a fellowship from Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) to pursue his studies. During his master studies, Antón worked on a research project at ICN2 and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), with a focus on functionalizing magnetic nanoparticles with polymeric coatings and targeting peptides for brain therapies.

In 2020, he moved to Zürich and joined the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab to pursue his PhD studies at ETH. His research is focused on designing biodegradable piezoelectric materials for neural tissue engineering applications.