I am a Distinguished Researcher in the School of Computer Science at UNED, Spain, supported by the Beatriz Galindo programme for attracting research talent. I was awarded the R3 certification, recognising my qualification as an established researcher. Prior to this, I held positions as Senior Lecturer and Lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE) at the University of Essex, UK, where I led multiple interdisciplinary projects. Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health (NLM/NIH) in the United States. During my PhD I worked as a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland Valais-Wallis (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), including research stays at the School of Information Science and Technology at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) in Stockholm, Sweden. In my initial research roles, I worked as a research assistant at the CIEN Foundation, Rey Juan Carlos University, and General Electric Healthcare in Madrid, Spain, contributing to several projects in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
I obtained my doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 2015. I also hold a Master of Science in Telemedicine and Bioengineering from the Technical University of Madrid (2009), and a five-year degree in Mathematics from the Complutense University of Madrid (2008).
My research focuses on applying mathematical and computational methods to develop technological tools, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, to model the complexity of the vast volumes of data available today. My main areas of interest include research in information technologies and artificial intelligence, with a special focus on computer vision, biomedical imaging, information retrieval, and evaluation. I also conduct research in multimodal artificial intelligence, where various types of data (image, text, voice, numerical data) are combined with multiple processing algorithms to achieve higher performance.
I have published widely in the field and have extensive experience in organising benchmarking campaigns. Since 2024, I have been the co-chair of the CLEF (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum) evaluation initiative, which involves over 200 research groups worldwide in large-scale information access system evaluation activities. Additionally, I have led and participated in editorial, organising, and technical committees for multiple artificial intelligence-related conferences and am a member of the editorial board of Scientific Data, a journal from the Nature group. I have secured external research funding totalling more than 1.2 million euros, excluding postgraduate researcher funding.
I have achieved several notable recognitions like Early Career Researcher Award for the University of Essex (UK), National Library of Medicine Honour Awards (USA), best paper awards at ICCVIP (Czechia), SPIE Medical Imaging (USA) and CoNy conferences (Czechia).
As a
teacher, I have made significant and sustained contributions to departmental teaching developing and delivering education units in both undergraduate and master levels and I have supervised undergraduate, master and PhD students on a variety of projects. In addition to my teaching and supervision duties, I served as Deputy Director of Education at CSEE in the University of Essex and I have made a significant contribution to the administration and general life and work of the department by participating in supervisory and interview panels, committees, and organising outreach activities.
