Associate Professor (Profesor Contratado Doctor) and Deputy Vice-Dean for International Relations at the School of Industrial Engineering (ETSII) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Dr. Andrés Sebastián holds a Ph.D. from the same institution (2022), earning the distinction of International Doctorate, Cum Laude, and the Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award 2021/22. He holds a Master\'s+Bachelor\'s in Industrial Engineering (2016;2014) with a specialization in energy technologies. His professional career began with research work related to concentrated solar energy at the IMDEA Energy Institute (2015). Later, he worked at the Spanish public company ISDEFE (2016) on a 2050 energy foresight project for the Ministry of Energy,Tourism, and Digital Agenda. These professional experiences sparked Andrés\' interest in energy research, particularly in innovative energy systems. In 2017, Andrés started his journey in UPM as an Assistant in the Energy Engineering Department.

Dr. Sebastián\'s research career as a member of the Thermal Energy for Sustainability (TE4S) includes the publication of ten articles in high impact factor journals (Q1) and +30 contributions to highly prestigious international conferences in his field, such as EuroTURBO and SolarPACES. In addition, Andrés has collaborated on seven projects at the international (EU H2020-ASTEP,FP7-CSP2), national, and regional levels. He conducted a short predoctoral research stay at Politecnico di Milano, where he deepened his knowledge of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in micro-turbomachinery. He also secured research grants (2x20.000€) for two consecutive years (2019;2020) from the IBERDROLA Foundation for energy and environmental research, enabling him to advance his work by integrating experimental and numerical studies of micro-turbomachinery with energy analyses of solar thermal plants. He has recently obtained the “Best Communication Award” at the last edition of the 14CNIT conference(2025) due to his research in tailored small turbocompressors for heat pumps.

The evolution of the research line of Dr. Sebastián has been linked to the technological, scientific and societal interest, gaining expertise in different areas in applied thermal engineering and merging all this know-how on his ongoing research on Pumped Thermal Energy Storage (PTES). His first research activities within the field of concentrated solar power and energy markets,  gave him a solid background in the energy sector at system-level. Then, his thesis on turbomachinery led Andrés to a component-level vision, tackling deep technical aspects of aerothermodynamics at numerical simulation (CFD) and experimental point of view. Both system and component-level approaches, together with the relevant advances on non-ideal flows on turbomachinery and high interest on heat pumps for decarbonization and energy storage led him to merge all his background and launch the research line on Carnot Batteries and PTES in 2020 together with Prof. Abbas. 

Regarding collaboration with industry, Dr. Sebastián has been collaborating with the company Alpha Unmanned Systems on the development and research of small two-stroke engines for their unmanned aerial vehicles. This close collaboration is part of an Industrial PhD Project funded by the Community of Madrid (2023, in which Andrés is a member of the research team, as well as a second Industrial PhD Project awarded in 2025, in which he serve as Principal Investigator.

Regarding Andrés Sebastián\'s teaching and training capacity at UPM, Andrés\' teaching is mainly focused on heat engines, turbomachinery, thermal machines,power cycles and thermal energy storage (+650h). He earned one DOCENTIA Excellent certification. Therefore, there is a direct link with his ongoing research area in the field of innovative large-scale  energy storage systems such as Carnot Batteries. This coherent teaching-research connection has led Dr. Sebastián to supervise +30 Bachelor& Master Theses. Almost a third of these students have been rewarded with financial support through awards (Repsol Chair, COIIM) or scholarships that have engaged them within the TE4S research group. Andrés Sebastián is also active innovative education (IE) approaches, being coordinator of four IE projects and also disseminating results in education journals and open-science initiatives. Currently, Dr. Sebastián co-supervises three PhD students.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the management experience of Andrés Sebastián in the academic environment. Andrés served as the Academic Secretary of the Energy Engineering Department for three years (2019-2022). This management experience boosted Andrés\' skills in academic coordination,including strategic planning, departmental organization, and facilitating collaboration among faculty members. Currently, he is a member of the Board of Management of the School of Industrial Engineering at UPM, where he serves as the Deputy Vice-Dean for International Relations at ETSII-UPM since 2024.This position enhances his international expertise by fostering connections with academic representatives from more than 200 international partner universities and visiting partners on a regular basis, such as Beihang University (China) and Polytechnique Montréal (Canada).