M.Carmen Martínez-Bisbal is graduated in Chemistry (Universitat de València (UV), 1996) and in Biochemistry (UV, 2014). She gained her PhD in 2003 at Physical Chemistry department at UV, on the application of NMR spectroscopy to the study of brain diseases. She is currently Associate Professor at Physical Chemistry Department at UV (from 2022).

She develops her research on in vivo NMR spectroscopy, microNMR, HR NMR spectroscopy and ex vivo HR-MAS NMR spectroscopy, for the study of samples of biomedical interest in the context of different diseases, in the research group MODeLiC in the Interuniversitary Research Institute for Molecular Recognition and Technological Development (IDM UV-UPV), in the Joint Research Unit in Nanomedicine and Sensors between Fundació Hospital La Fe and IDM, and in the research group CB07/01/2012 in the Biomedical Research Network Center in the field of Bioengineering, Biomaterials, and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN).

Her research is focused on NMR metabolomics for the study of biofluids, and development of non-invasive biomarkers of disease and progression (bladder cancer Loras et al, Cancers 2019 11: 686, and Cancers 2019 11: 914, Alzheimer Disease Botello-Marabotto et al. Neurobiol.  Dis. 2023 and patent P202030235, PCT/ES2021/070203, glaucoma detection Botello-Marabotto et al. Talanta 2024 and patent P202131032, atheroma plaque vulnerability Botello-Maraboto et al. Talanta 2025, and pulmonary fibrosis Botello-Marabotto et al. J. Med. Virol. 2025).

She also works in the development of new sensors for disease/biomarker detection based on electrochemical sensors (prostate cancer Pascual et al. Analyst 2016, Monreal-Trigo et al. iScience 2022) and based on gated materials for detection (gluten Pla et al. Anal. Chim. Acta 2021, colorectal cancer Pla et al. Nanoscale 2021, mutation in gliomas Pla et al. Sens. Actuators B Chem. 2021) and for targeting cancer cells (colonic tissue González-Álvarez et al. Mol. Pharmaceutics 2017, Bhat et al. Nanoscale 2017)

She is co-author of 55 publications in international journals (over 1777 times cited to papers published, h-index 23). She is inventor of 3 patents. She has participated in 34 research projects (3 European, 15 national, 2 autonomic projects, 14 projects with universities, hospitals and public research institutions).

She has developed research activities with companies. She worked in Hospital Quirón to develop in vivo NMR spectroscopy application in patients (2000-2003). She developed projects with Laboratorios SERONO and Dr. Esteve S.A. She was external collaborator in Philips Sistemas Médicos (2001-2007) for in vivo NMR spectroscopy application in 17 hospitals in Spain and Portugal. She collaborated with Bruker Biospin, to implement the HR-MAS NMR technique to the study of tissue biopsies (Martínez-Bisbal et al. NMR Biomed. 2004, Martínez-Bisbal et al. NMR Biomed. 2009). She collaborated with FACSA for the development of voltammetric electronic tongue for the monitoring of wastewater and spring water (Martínez-Bisbal et al. Electroanalysis 2017, Carbó et al. Sensors 2017, patent P201631405). She collaborated with Buggypower for the development of sensors for quality control in microalgae production (Martínez-Bisbal et al. Sens. Actuators B Chem. 2019).

She has supervised 3 PhD thesis. She is reviewer for Frontiers in Oncology, Anal. Bioanal. Chem., Food Analytical Methods, Sensors, Epilepsia, Frontiers in Pharmacology, Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience and Metabolomics journals. She has served as international project evaluator for Narodrowe Centrum Nauki – NCN Poland PRELUDIUM call, and she was Remote Referee of ERC Starting Grant. She is secretary of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Universitat de Valencia since February 2022.

Rafael Muñoz-Espí is an Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Valencia. He graduated in Chemistry at this university (Licentiate Degree in 2001). He was awarded a postgraduate fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Foundation “La Caixa” to conduct his doctoral studies in Germany. From 2002 to 2006 he worked under the supervision of Prof. Gerhard Wegner at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz, and he received his doctoral degree in 2006 from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

In 2007, he moved to the USA as a Postdoctoral Associate in the group of Prof. Benjamin Chu at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he worked for two years, with frequent stays at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Muñoz-Espí was Group Leader of the team "Polymer/Inorganic Hybrid Colloids" at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, in the Department of Physical Chemistry of Polymers headed by Prof. Katharina Landfester. During this time, he was responsible for several projects and industrial contracts at national (German) and international level.

In September 2015, Dr. Muñoz-Espí joined the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia (ICMUV) as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Fellow. Since May 2021, he has been an Associate Professor at this institution.

Dr. Muñoz-Espí has coauthored more than 100 scientific peer-reviewed publications in high-ranking international journals and 6 book chapters. He acts periodically as a reviewer for scientific agencies and for several chemistry and materials science journals. His current research interests include mineralization processes, the synthesis of polymeric and hybrid nanoparticles, crystallization in colloidal systems, and the study of the interaction of polymers with inorganic matter. In the last years, he has conducted research and teaching stays as a visiting professor/scientist at the Bar-Ilan University (Israel, 2016), the University of Padova (Italy, 2018), and the Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (Ecuador, 2018).

In addition to chemistry, he is interested in linguistics. He holds a B.A. in Catalan Language from the University of Andorra (2015) and a B.A. in Catalan Language and Literature from the Open University of Catalonia (2016). He has studied the morphological and semantic specificity of the Andorran neology (see here).

Coming from a background of analytical chemistry, my research has focused on developing vibrational spectroscopic techniques to address a wide range of bioanalytical problems spanning the clinical and biological fields. Clinical Spectroscopy is a multidisciplinary field that involves research in chemistry, optics, and statistics to provide applications in the biomedical context. I have been very lucky to work in different labs across Europe and Australia, including France (1.5 years), Germany (0.5 years), Australia (4.5 years) and Ireland (2 years). I have finally settled in the University of Valencia with a Ramon y Cajal grant, where I am establishing myself as an independent researcher.

 My contribution to the field of vibrational spectroscopy has advanced knowledge in 4 central themes:
i) Sample processing for IR analysis: Improving clinical spectroscopy methods by using sample pretreatment techniques. 
ii) Chemometrics and data fusion: Application of novel chemometric datamining algorithms. Development of methods for fusing data from different modalities, including infrared (IR) and Mass Spectrometry and the multimodal imaging of IR and Raman.
ii) Infrared and Raman micro- and nano- imaging. Images of cells and tissues using Raman and IR. Use of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) coupled with IR and Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (TERS).
iv) Translational research. Development of methods for biofluid analysis, and most notably diagnosis of Malaria in developing countries and quantification of clinical parameters for bio-fluids at the hospital level and in the point-of-care context. Field trials in Thailand using portable instrumentation.

Scientific Output:  I have authored more than 60 journal articles and 2 chapters in indexed scientific journals: 55% as the first or corresponding author, 66% of the articles published in the first Quartile (Q1) of their respective field. These works have been cited 1200 times (Jan,2020); h-index is 23; [Google Scholar] and I obtained a granted US patent. As a PI, my projects have obtained more than 500K EUR in funding from institutions in Europe, Australia and Asia.