WAJIH
AL-SOUFI

Wajih Al-Soufi is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in Spain. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1962, he pursued his undergraduate studies in Physics at the Carolo-Wilhelmina University of Braunschweig and the Georg-August University of Göttingen. He conducted his diploma thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, focusing on spectroscopy. In 1988, he earned his degree in Physics from the University of Göttingen and later pursued his doctoral research at the same institute, concentrating on photolysis studies of tunneling effects in hydrogen transfer reactions in the triplet state. He obtained his Doctorate in Sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Göttingen in 1991. Between 1992 and 1996, Al-Soufi worked at Drägerwerk AG in Lübeck, Germany, in research and development for Medical Technology, specifically in the Department of Sensors for Anesthesia. He was the technical lead for a project that developed a new infrared optical sensor for identifying and quantifying anesthetic gases. In 1996, he joined the Department of Physical Chemistry at USC's Lugo Campus as a University Assistant. He became an Interim Associate Professor in 2001 and secured a permanent position as an Associate Professor in 2002. In 2015, he received national accreditation for the position of University Professor, and in 2022, he was appointed as a full Professor. Al-Soufi's research focuses on fluorescence spectroscopy, supramolecular dynamics, and single-molecule detection. He has led several research projects, including studies on the fluorescence detection of individual molecules for structural and dynamic analysis of supramolecular systems with biomedical and technological relevance. He has supervised multiple doctoral theses and has an extensive list of publications in peer-reviewed journals, with his work earning significant citations and impact. Beyond his research, Al-Soufi is dedicated to teaching and educational innovation. Since 2013, he has been the founder and technical coordinator of the Teaching Innovation Group XuvenCiencia, which offers training to school staff, develops educational science kits, and organizes one of Spain’s largest annual scientific summer campuses for young people. At USC, he teaches Physical Chemistry courses, including "Fluorescence and Photochemical Spectroscopy" for master's students and "Physical Chemistry I and II" for Biochemistry undergraduates. For more information on his research and publications, you can visit his profiles on ResearchGate, ORCID, and Google Scholar.