Fitxa persona

Sergi Maicas Prieto (Castelló de la Plana, 1969) holds a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences (Biochemistry) and a PhD in Biological Sciences (Microbiology) from the Universitat de València. After several postdoctoral appointments at the CSIC and in industrial R&D centres, he built his academic career at the Universidad Cardenal Herrera–CEU and, since 2016, as Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Ecology at the Faculty of Biology of the Universitat de València. He has been awarded five research merit periods (sexenios) and four teaching merit periods (quinquenios).

His research focuses on three main lines: wine microbiota and malolactic fermentation, the biology of clinically relevant yeasts and fungi (particularly Candida spp.), and, more recently, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) approached through artificial intelligence and One Health perspectives. He is the author of numerous articles in journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, with an H-index of 24 (Scopus) and 30 (Google Scholar), as well as books and book chapters, and has taken part in competitive R&D projects and technology-transfer contracts with companies in the biotechnology and agri-food sectors.

In terms of academic management and leadership, he has directed the official Master's Degree in Molecular, Cellular and Genetic Biology at the Universitat de València since 2015, and also chairs its Quality Assurance Committee. He coordinates the BIOTECMIC research group and the MICROMÓN-UV Teaching Innovation Group in Microbiology, and drives service-learning and citizen-science initiatives such as Micromón/Tiny Earth, aimed at raising awareness of antimicrobial resistance among university and secondary-school students. He has supervised doctoral theses and Master's dissertations, and maintains close international collaborations, notably with the Euromed University of Fez (UEMF, Morocco), where he also serves as an associate professor, and with institutions in Argentina.

Maicas combines his teaching work with extensive science-communication activity in the press, radio and television, alongside his commitment to Valencian as the working language of his teaching and outreach, holding a C2 accreditation. He serves as a reviewer and editor for international scientific journals, and has been actively involved in university committees, doctoral thesis and faculty-position review panels, as well as in international scientific organisations, including the Executive Council of the World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW).

He is currently devoting much of his work to the international MicroMondeMaroc/U3M project, a service-learning and citizen-science programme on antimicrobial resistance developed in collaboration with Morocco, as well as to the development of new research proposals on AI-assisted antimicrobial resistance surveillance within a Spain-Morocco One Health cooperation framework.