Fitxa persona

Bachelor's degree in Physics (1987) from the University of Valencia and Laurea in Physics from the University of Padua (1994). She began her research career in 1988 in Italy, first at the INFN (1988) and then at the CNR (1989-1993) with an FPU scholarship, a stay that led to her obtaining a PhD in Physics (University of Valencia, 1994) with a thesis on interferometric measurement of plasma density, in the RFX fusion project-experiment, Reversed Field Pinch (RFP) type.

She has been a tenured professor of applied physics at the University of Valencia since 2000 in the Department of Applied Physics and Electromagnetism, after having been an assistant professor (1994). She is also a researcher at the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia (ICMUV).

After joining the University of Valencia, she conducted research into laminar and semi-magnetic semiconductors, particularly their optical properties. Since 1996, she has also been working on materials under extreme high-pressure conditions (diamond and Paris-Edinburgh cells), with structural, optical (fluorescence, absorption, Raman, IR), and transport measurements, including high temperatures, on materials of geophysical and technological interest, and also with experience in European synchrotron radiation facilities (LURE, ESRF, DIAMOND, SOLEIL, and ALBA).

Participant in more than 30 funded research projects, including a CONSOLIDER Ingenio 2010 project (MALTA, High Pressure Matter) and three PROMETEO projects from the Valencian Regional Government (Advanced Materials for Green Technologies, GREENMAT).

She has held several academic management positions. She was director of the Department of Applied Physics and Electromagnetism for six years (2017-2023) and, prior to that, secretary of the same department (2003-2006). She was vice dean of studies and chair of the Physics CAT (2006-2012) and chair of the CEPE for the development of the new Bachelor's Degree in Physics (2008-2010) linked to European harmonization.

For more than 25 years, she has been intensely involved in outreach activities focused on understanding the fundamentals of science and the scientific method, emphasizing the relationship between theoretical and experimental aspects and university-secondary school relations. She has given more than 50 lectures, training courses, and experimental workshops.

Initiator and head of the UV Classroom Physics Demonstration Collection, a pioneering project to revive the use of experimental demonstrations in teaching, with more than 200 demonstrations available to all teachers. Coordinator (since 2005) of the Experimenta Physics and Technology Fair-Competition, with around 300 participants and more than 3,000 visitors each year, for which she has obtained competitive projects from the FECYT and agreements with the Valencia Science Museum annually since 2013. She is also responsible for the Experimenta Lab (since 2006), a laboratory attended by aprox. 700 secondary school students each year. Since 2011, she has been coordinator of the Archimedes Physics Working Group (2013 Physics in Society Award - Science in Action), which promotes the above activities. She is also a physics specialist for the regional university entrance exams (since 2008), president and organizer of the Valencia Physics Olympiad (since 2008), and vicepresident of the Division of Physics Teaching and Dissemination of the Royal Spanish Physics Society (RSEF). In 2018, she was awarded the RSEF-BBVA Foundation Prize for Teaching and Dissemination in University Education.