I am currently Profesor Contratado Doctor (reader) in the Department of Materials Science at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). I am a member of the research group “Advanced Structural Materials and Nanomaterials” at the same university. I graduated with an integrated BSc-MSc 5-year program in Physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2001, specializing in Condensed Matter Physics. I obtained later a MSc. in Materials Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (2004), where I pursued my doctoral degree. I was awarded with a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry for Science (FPI, 2005-2007) and a competitive position as a research assistant funded by the Regional Government of Madrid (2007-2009). My PhD. Thesis, “Mechanical Behavior of Nonwoven Felts” (2011), was awarded with one of the University Prizes to the Best Theses in 2012. My research activity is focused on the mechanical properties of materials, both in experimental and modelling standpoints.

A significant fraction of my work has been devoted to fibrous materials, in part to the determination of deformation and failure mechanisms in nonwovens, but mostly to the multiscale modelling of their constitutive behaviour. In this regard, we reported for the first time the existence of an inverse notch sensitivity effect in this kind of material, and we have developed several models (either by mimicking their microstructure or from the continuum point of view) which are able to reproduce the tensile response of several nonwoven fabrics, as well as their behaviour upon impact loading. This prolonged activity with nonwovens has been continued at lower scales with the investigation of the mechanical properties of macroscopic fibres made of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In this regard, we have linked their mechanical properties with their orientation and hierarchical microestructure. In parallel, through several collaborations, I have been able to apply micromechanical models to woven composites or nanostructured metals, in this case with a self-consistent crystal plasticity model. In 2016, I was invited to join, as a Deputy Chairman, a new technical committee at RILEM (International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures) on Hydrogen Embrittlement. In collaboration with Dr. Javier Sánchez, with ample experience in the field, we developed a preliminary coupled mechano-diffusional FEM model which took into account hydrogen embrittlement with a cohesive crack model. Later, additional effort has been made to study from first principles the diffusion of hydrogen in pure iron and its dependency with temperature. My research output is summarized in 26 JCR papers, 23 placed in Q1 (WoS), with 439 citations in Scopus (328 in the last four years). I have also participated in 11 competitively funded projects (European and Spanish calls), IP of one funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science . I have supervised or co-supervised 1 PhD thesis, 9 MSc theses and more than 20 BSc theses.