I hold an Ayudante Doctor position at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). I have a MSc in Engineering Biology from the Umeå University (Sweden), with a specialty in plant biotechnology. During my Master I investigated an N-glycosylated protein (CAH1) localized in the chloroplast, a topic of industrial and medical importance. I obtained an Industrial PhD student position with funding from the Swedish Research Council to continue this research line. I was employed by the biotech company SweTree Technologies and conducted my research at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC, Sweden), one of the strongest research environments for experimental plant biology in Europe. The rights to our discovery were sold to SweTree, and this company filed a European patent in which I was one of the five inventors. After studying how a static modification such as N-glycosylation can affect protein stability and function, I wanted to learn how the activities of proteins are regulated by more dynamic modifications. I joined a leading lab in the field of nutrients and growth factors directed by Dr. N. Djouder at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO, Madrid), a Severo Ochoa National Centre of Excellence ranked as one of the best institutes for cancer research worldwide.

Later I was a post-doc in the group of Dr. Luis Rubio at the Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics (CBGP, Madrid), also a Severo Ochoa Centre, where I worked in a project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aiming to engineer crops that can fix N2. My main responsibility has been to express functional nitrogenase proteins in yeast, and to transfer these prokaryotic components into plants. Within this project I have demonstrated my leadership through scientific supervision of students from undergraduate (one TFM and two TFG) to PhD levels (currently co-supervising two PhD students). I showed that nitrogenase tetramer formation is possible in yeast (ACS Synthetic Biology). This finding was in 2017 listed by the Royal Society of Biology (RSB, UK) as one of the most fundamental breakthroughs in biology. I also succeeded in the in vivo biosynthesis of nitrogenase cofactors in the yeast mitochondria (PNAS), a key achievement for the engineering of nitrogen-fixing plants. We are now transferring these components to plant model systems such as tobacco (Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2020, and Communications Biology, 2021), but also to important staple crops such as rice (submitted to Nature Plants). I have filed one patent and have co-author review articles and commentaries. I have chaired sessions and given plenary talks at the most important international meetings in the N fixation field.

I have an interest in reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation in plant organelles and have authored two review articles in the subject. I have established contact with a group led by Dr. Olivier Keech at UPSC (Sweden) specialized in plant mitochondria metabolism. I am part of a 5-year project (“Biotechnology and plant breeding – food, feed and forest products”, total amount 2.700.000 €) granted by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF). My contribution to this project will be the identification of optimal metabolic conditions allowing for active nitrogenase in trees. Related to this topic I have supervised a student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA) via the MIT-Spain internship program.B.2. Breve descripción del Trabajo de Fin de Máster (TFM) y puntuación obtenida Take parts from the summary, like the grant and the filing of a patent.