Dr. Villagrán is originally from Uruguay and made his professional studies from the bachelor’s degree to the doctorate, working on the construction of various types of lasers, at the National University of La Plata in Argentina, ending in 1986. He subsequently made a post-doctorate at Colorado State University, in the USA, building X-ray lasers. After working on medical applications of lasers in California, he traveled to Mexico to UNAM, with the idea of continuing them. Due to lack of support in these areas, he returned to his origins in the construction of lasers and the study of the interaction of pulses of light with matter.

In 2001 he founded the Photophysics Laboratory in which they have developed many techniques to “see”, using spectroscopy and “hear”, through photoacoustics, the processes that are triggered after excitation with a pulse of light.

He has published more than 100 scientific articles in international journals on applications of pulsed lasers of ns and has directed several bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral thesis. The topics have been varied and range from the diagnosis of plasmas that simulate lightning or star explosions, to the characterization of materials and surface cleaning with historical value.

His current interests are once again the medical applications of lasers, applying various laser spectroscopy techniques.

• Laser spectroscopies and plasma diagnostics

• Characterization of materials and biological tissue by photoacoustic and photothermic methods

• In general, nanosecond duration pulsed laser applications

• Laser and photothermal spectroscopy applied to the study of physicochemical properties of biological systems”, approved in October 2020, to begin the 2021.

• Instructor at the Science Faculty and the Postgraduate Programmes in Physics, Materials Science and Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
• Thesis advisor (undergraduate and graduate programmes).

• H. Bakkali, E. Blanco, M. Dominguez, M .B. de la Mora, C. Sánchez-Aké, M. Villagrán-Muniz, B. Bérini, D. Schmool, S. Lofland, (2020)The effect of oblique-angle sputtering on large area deposition: a unidirectional ultrathin Au plasmonic film growth design, Nanotechnology, vol. 31, No. 44, 445701 (9pp), ISSN 0957-4484, https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6528/aba65b
• D A Collazos-Burbano, JL Ealo Cuello, and M Villagran-Muniz , (2021), “Propagation of Ultrasonic Guided Waves in Plant Leaves”, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 54 095401
• K. F. Navarro, J. Urrutia-Fucugauchi, M. Villagran-Muniz, C. Sánchez-Aké, T. Pi-Puig, L. Pérez-Cruz, R. Navarro-González, Emission spectra of a simulated Chicxulub impact-vapor plume at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, Icarus 346, 113813, 2020. ISBN: 0019-1035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2020.113813.
• Diana L. García‐Rubio, M. B de la Mora, Doris Cerecedo, José M. Saniger Blesa. M. Villagrán‐Muniz, “An optical-based biosensor of the epithelial sodium channel as a tool for diagnosing hypertension”, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 157 (2020) 112151, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2020.112151
• B.Stefanuk, C.Sánchez-Aké, J.L.Benítez, O.Depablos-Rivera, T.García-Fernández, S.Negrete-Aragón, M.Villagrán-Muniz, (2020), Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy enhancement of glass by few-layer graphene coating. Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy, 105823, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2020.105823.
• Martinez Fuentes, Marco; Sanchez Ake, Citlali; Herrera, Julio; Villagran-Muniz, “Complementary characterization of laser-induced plasmas by optical emission spectroscopy and triple Langmuir probe”, (2019), IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 47, 12, 5299-5305, ISSN: 0093-3813, on line ISSN: 1939-9375, 10.1109/TPS.2019.2951392.
• Osmary Depablos-Rivera, Citlali Sánchez-Aké, Raúl Álvarez-Mendoza,Tupak García-Fernándezc, Stephen Muhl, Mayo Villagrán-Muniz, “Hybrid magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser ablation for the deposition of composite ZnO-Au films”, Thin Solid Films, Volume 685, 1 September (2019), Pages 66-74, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsf.2019.06.006
• Diana L. García‐Rubio, M. B de la Mora, Isidro Badillo‐Ramírez, Doris Cerecedo, José M. Saniger, José Luis Benítez‐Benítez, M. Villagrán‐Muniz “Analysis of platelets in hypertensive and normotensive individuals using Raman and Fourier transform infrared‐attenuated total reflectance spectroscopies”. J Raman Spectrosc. (2019); 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/jrs.5540
• M. Pérez, A. Dutt, B. de la Mora, E. Mon-Pérez, M. Villagrán-Muniz, M.F. García-Sánchez, G. Santana, Effect of ammonia plasma treatment on the luminescence and stability of porous silicon,Materials Letters (2018), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2018.01.113.
• E. Castellón, P. Pacheco Martínez, J. Álvarez, F. Bredice, F. Borges, M. Villagrán-Muniz, C. Sánchez-Aké, V. Palleschi, R. Sarmiento “Elemental analysis of dental amalgams by Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy technique”, Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy, vol. 149, pag. 229-235, 2018, 10.1016/j.sab.2018.05.025.

Graduate

Doctoral:

• Georgina Marisol Molina Granados, “Characterization of soils by means of laser-       induced breakthrough spectroscopy”, Postgraduate in Earth Sciences, beginning 2018-II

Undegraduate

• Fernando Estrada Salgado, “Amplification in the emission intensity of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in transparent glass”
• Isaac López Calderón, “Amplification of LIBS signals with absorbent materials”
•