Javier García de Abajo obtained his PhD in condensed matter theory from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) in 1993. After spending three years in Berkeley National Lab., he became staff scientist at CSIC (Spain) and he was promoted to Research Professor in 2008. He is currently leading the Nanophotonics Theory group at ICFO. He has worked in atomic collisions, surface science, electron microscope spectroscopies, plasmonics, and theoretical nanophotonics. He has coauthored 350+ papers that have accumulated 24,000+ citations and a h index of 76 (WoK, Jan. 2019). He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Javier García de Abajo's research program on the theory nanoscale photonics ranges from optical characterization with electron-microscope spectroscopies to studies of ultrasensitive single-molecule detection, quantum aspects of light-matter interaction, excitation and characterization of plasmons by electron beams, plasmonic metamaterials, quantum friction, radiative transfer and coherent control, and graphene plasmonics. These topics cover a broad spectrum of research in nanophotonics. This theoretical effort encompasses classical and quantum methods, both analytical and numerical, which are the basis to understand and propose new phenomena with application to biosensing and quantum plasmonics.