I am currently an Associate Professor (Profesor Titular de Universidad) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). My research experience has been extensively focused on forest species adaptation to drought, interaction between drought and Dutch elm disease and in the last years also to the improvement of the resin tapping sector in southern Europe. I was granted with a Marie Curie-IOF fellowship in 2014 to strengthen my training in forest ecophysiology and particularly in plant hydraulics and forest decline in two centers of research excellence, the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment of the Western Sydney University (Australia) and INRA Clermont-Ferrand (France). 

I have published 54 papers in journals included in the JCR, 6 book chapters and edited one book, achieving high-quality standards. I have presented 57 contributions at conferences and I have actively participated in the organization of 4 scientific meetings. My involvement in teaching and mentoring, review duties and examination boards exemplify my strong commitment to giving service to the science community. I combine scientific research with capacity-building and dissemination of my results to stakeholders for conservation and use of genetic resources. This interest in applied science is shown in 3 agreements with Public Administration in the last 10 years to meet their specific demands to implement forest and conservation policies and several popular science publications. I have also participated in two COST actions and European projects. 

My PhD (UPM 2009, Special Award) was focused on quantifying genetic variability and phenotypic plasticity of adaptive traits throughout different developmental stages of Pinus canariensis. During my first post-doctoral stay at INRA in Clermont-Ferrand (2009-2010), I received training in plant hydraulics and biomechanics discovering a hydraulic pulse after stem bending which can be a candidate for rapid long-distance signaling within the plant. When I returned to my lab in Madrid, I opened a new research line in plant hydraulics. Following this research line, our research group have partly elucidated the distribution in the Iberian Peninsula of the three species of European elms and have confirmed the heritability of resistance to Dutch elm disease and its independence from xylem vulnerability to drought. During my Marie-Curie fellowship I have been working with a wide group of researchers in the fields of ecology, plant physiology and modelling in deciphering the physiological mechanism leading to plant mortality and quantifying the degree plasticity of plant hydraulic traits. Part of the most remarkable results were published in 2018 in a review in Nature. I have been participating in two European projects related with improvements of the resin tapping sector. I was PI of one of them funded by the Climate KIC. During the last years I have established a solid network of Spanish and foreign collaborators. I am expanding my research interests and lines through a multidisciplinary approach with experts in pathology, molecular biology, modelling and other aspects of forest ecophysiology. In this sense, my scientific interest in the medium / long term is to advance in the knowledge of the mechanisms that regulate the acclimatization of forest species to abiotic and biotic factors. The ultimate goal is to provide scientists and managers with information that helps predicting and mitigating the impact of climate change