Bachelor's degree in Physics from the Universitat de València in 1999. After two years at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, I received an FPI fellowship from the Ministry of Science and Technology to join the Solar Radiation Group at the UV, where I defended my doctoral thesis. During 2008–2009 I carried out a postdoctoral stay at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). I was a Juan de la Cierva fellow at the Universidad de La Laguna in 2011 and 2012. In 2012 I rejoined the Universitat de València as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, being promoted to Assistant Professor with PhD (Profesor Ayudante Doctor) in the Department of Earth Physics and Thermodynamics in 2013. I obtained a permanent position as Associate Professor (Profesor Titular) in 2018.

My main research has focused on characterizing the properties of atmospheric aerosols using solar photometer measurements, as well as their relationship with solar radiation, clouds, and their role as an atmospheric pollutant. Coordinator of the ESR network and member of the international committee of the SKYNET network

Carlos F. Franco Viñuales is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Valencia.

He has a degree in civil engineering, a degree in environmental sciences, a master's degree in occupational risk prevention and a doctorate in business management.

His teaching and research specialization focuses on the study of quality management (ISO 9001 standard), environmental management (ISO 14001 standard) and health and safety management (ISO 45001 standard).

He has developed numerous consulting projects on issues related to the implementation of quality, environmental, health and safety, compliance systems, etc.

José Luis Gómez Amo received his PhD in Physics in 2006. He was awarded with different PhD and postdoctoral fellowship positions and granted for several research stays abroad. Currently, he is Associate Professor in the department of Physics of the Earth and Thermodynamics of the University of Valencia. He is member of the Solar Radiation Group of the University of Valencia (GRSV) since 1999. His teaching includes both, experimental and theoretical lessons, mainly on environmental physics, radiative transfer, and renewable energy. Since 2007 he has been teaching in the Remote Sensing Master and he has supervised more than 30 Master's and Degree theses. He has been supervisor of 4 PhD theses, and nowadays he is supervising 3 PhD theses more and several master and degree projects.

His research is mainly focused on atmospheric physics and solar radiation. In particular, he study the radiative transfer processes in the atmosphere due to different atmospheric components (aerosols, clouds, ozone and water vapor) combining remote sensing measurements and atmospheric modelling. He dedicates special attention to determining the impact of aerosols and clouds and its interactions on the Earth-Atmosphere radiative budget as well as their climatic implications. He also has proven expertise in radiometric instrumentation and Lidar, as well as in data processing and analysis. His scientific-technical interests also include the development of instrumentation for the measurement of atmospheric parameters as well as the study of solar energy systems and energy efficiency. He has participated in a multitude of interdisciplinary measurement campaigns worldwide; in collaboration with several research institutions (including ESA and NASA). He has been IP of four projects of the Spanish National Research Plan. Currently, he is the responsible of spectral radiation measurements and vertical profiling instrumentation for aerosol and clouds of the Burjassot AtmoSpheric Station (BASS). In addition, he is the PI regarding to these measurements in different Research Infrastructure projects and measurement Networks (ACTRIS, e-PROFILE, WaLiNeAs). He is co-author of more than 50 scientific publications in high quality indexed journals and more than 100 contributions to national and international conferences.

She holds a degree in Physics with an Extraordinary Award in Fundamental Physics (1991) and a PhD in Physics (1996) from the University of Valencia.
She has been an Associate Professor of Applied Physics since 2000 in the Department of Earth Physics and Thermodynamics at the University of Valencia, after having been an FPU fellow and assistant lecturer. 

Her research focuses on Applied Rheology in food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical systems, carried out in the laboratory located at the Faculty of Pharmacy. She is currently involved in research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Valencian Regional Government, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Physical and Sensory Properties of the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC, Valencia) and the Department of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Technology, and Parasitology at the University of Valencia. She has recognised five periods of research by ANECA.

She has undertaken research stays at universities in Seville, Glasgow, and Colombia, and has participated in projects with companies such as BABÈ, NOVARTIS, KOROTT, and KERN PHARMA. She co-organized the IBEREO 2017 conference together with IATA and has been a member of the Scientific Committee of several international rheology conferences. She is currently Treasurer of the Governing Board of the Spanish Group of Rheology of the RSEF.

She has completed more than 50 courses in Teaching Training and Innovation and has participated in various educational innovation projects related to teaching in the first years of scientific degree programs and in multidisciplinary initiatives such as INNOCAMPUS. She also takes part in outreach activities with secondary education, such as Aula Experimenta and the Experimenta Fair. She is a member of the Local Committee of the Physics Olympiad and was part of the organizing team of the National Physics Olympiad in 2025. She is a member of the Executive Board of the Division of Education and Outreach of the RSEF.

She has served as First-Year Coordinator and Degree Coordinator for the Physics degree program, and since March 2024 she has been Vice-Dean for Physics Studies and Innovation.

Pascual López-López is Associate Professor of Ecology at the Department of Microbiology and Ecology of the University of Valencia and researcher at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (ICBiBE), where he leads the Movement Ecology Lab.

His research focuses on movement ecology, spatial ecology and conservation biology, with a particular interest in the study of threatened raptors. Throughout his career, he has conducted research aimed at understanding how environmental conditions, landscape structure and human activities influence movement patterns, space use, habitat selection and population dynamics of wildlife. His work integrates high-resolution telemetry and bio-logging technologies, remote sensing, geographic information systems, spatial modelling and advanced demographic analyses.

Since 2006, he has participated in numerous research projects related to movement ecology and vertebrate conservation, conducting studies in several European and Latin American countries. His main research interests include the spatial ecology of large raptors, dispersal and migration processes, ecological connectivity, the dynamics of threatened populations and the assessment of impacts associated with human infrastructures, particularly in the context of the energy transition and the expansion of renewable energy.

His research combines both fundamental and applied approaches with the aim of generating scientific knowledge that supports biodiversity conservation and evidence-based decision-making. In this context, he has led and participated in numerous competitive research projects and knowledge-transfer contracts with public administrations, conservation organisations and energy-sector companies, contributing to the development of measures aimed at reducing impacts on wildlife and improving the management of threatened species.

He is the author of more than one hundred scientific publications in international peer-reviewed journals, has presented his work at more than one hundred national and international conferences, and regularly collaborates with research groups from different countries. He also maintains an active editorial role as Associate Editor and scientific reviewer for several international journals specialising in ecology, zoology and conservation.

In the field of teaching, he lectures in undergraduate and postgraduate courses related to ecology, biodiversity conservation, endangered species management and movement ecology. He has supervised five PhD dissertations, as well as numerous master's and bachelor's theses, contributing to the training of new generations of researchers and professionals in environmental and biological sciences.

His research pursues a common goal: understanding how organisms respond to a constantly changing environment and applying this knowledge to the development of effective strategies for biodiversity conservation.

Carlos Martínez-Pérez is Associate Professor of Palaeontology in the Department of Botany and Geology at the University of Valencia (Spain). He obtained his BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Valencia (2001), completed his doctoral studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, and earned his PhD from the University of Valencia in 2010. Between 2011 and 2014, he carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Bristol (UK), where he specialized in the study of early vertebrates using advanced three-dimensional imaging, synchrotron tomography and biomechanical approaches. He joined the University of Valencia in 2014 and has held the position of Associate Professor since 2020. His research focuses on early vertebrate evolution, particularly conodonts, the evolution of biomineralization and functional palaeobiology. He has supervised and co-supervised national and international PhD students, collaborates with research groups across Europe, Asia and South America, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications.

[Biography, english version]

Dr. Francesc Mesquita Joanes is a full professor of Ecology at the University of Valencia, and head of the lab of Ecology and Biogeography of Aquatic Systems at the "Cavanilles" Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology. He obtained an extraordinary PhD award with a thesis on population and community ecology of freshwater ostracods, supervised by professors M. R. Miracle and A. Sanz and defended in 1998. After a postdoctoral stay over a year at the Dep. of Geography, University of Hull (UK), where he worked with Huw I. Griffiths on ostracod palaeoecological applications, he obtained an assistant professorship post in Ecology at the University of Valencia in 2000 (later promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2022), where he has been teaching topics related to Ecology, Biogeography and Biodiversity, both at the undergraduate level and to master students. He has participated in or has coordinated multidisciplinary projects and has supervised PhD theses on palaeoecology and environmental change, evolutionary ecology of reproductive strategies (sexual/asexual), biological invasions, applied limnology, and diversity, conservation, ecophysiology and taxonomy of freshwater ostracods. Regarding his international achievements, he has participated as the Spanish coordinator in the EU-funded project SEXASEX, directed by K. Martens (Belgium), organized a pan-European sampling campaign and published several articles. He has also collaborated in a NERC (UK) project on genomic responses to climate change, with R. Snook, R. Butlin y K. Gaston, and in several other recent EU-funded projects coordinated by Prof. Antonio Camacho. Furthermore, he has done research stays longer than a month in several research organizations in the UK, Belgium, Japan, Argentina, Canada and Thailand, and has been an invited speaker in several international symposia. At present he is principal investigator of a research project funded by the Spanish Government (AEI), on the spatial scale effects on biodiversity in all groups of organisms in aquatic systems, focusing on ricefields, with co-PI M.T. Antón-Pardo, and also participating F. Palero and R. Ortells. Prior to this, he was PI of other AEI research project on the study of metacommunity ecology of aquatic systems or stress effects of salinity and temperature in crustacean metabolism. In the metacommunity framework he has studied temporary ponds in Costa Rica and Nicaragua (with C. Rojo, J. Armengol, M. Sasa and J. Monrós), shallow salt lakes (with A. Camacho), interdune ponds (with J. Armengol and J. Rueda) and Thai water bodies (with S. Savatenalinton). As a result of his last research projects as PI, on aquatic biodiversity and metacommunity ecology, he published, in collaboration with outstanding researchers including Anne Magurran (Univ. East Anglia), Robert D. Holt (Univ. Florida) or Pedro Peres-Neto (Concordia Univ.) several articles in prestigious journals such as Ecology and Limnology & Oceanography, and book chapter reviews on tropical wetland metacommunities or ostracod ecology and biodiversity.

I was born in Mislata (Valencia) in 1954. Thanks to the help of my two brothers, I was able to complete my undergraduate studies in Mathematics in 1975 and in Physics in 1976 at the University of Valencia.

In 1979, I earned my doctorate in Mathematics from the same university, under the supervision of Antonio Martínez Naveira, to whom I owe almost everything I have been able to achieve in the scientific field. Other mathematicians who have influenced my work include Lieven Vanhecke (University of Leuven) and, especially, Alfred Gray (University of Maryland).

My attendance at the Besse seminar (University of Paris VI) has had a decisive influence on my work. My last three-month stay in Paris in 1985 radically changed my line of research. Another short four-month stay at the University of Maryland in 1992 has also had significant repercussions.

I began supervising my first doctoral student in 1986. I have supervised six more doctoral students since then. Collaborating with them has made my work both the most challenging and the most rewarding. In 1997, I invited A. Borisenko (University of Kharkiv) to Valencia and experienced firsthand how fruitful the Latin-Russian symbiosis is for mathematical research. With him, I began my work on negative curvature, and with him (and my penultimate doctoral student, E. Cabezas-Rivas) I initiated my current research topic on geometric flows, also taking advantage of my sabbatical year in 2004.

Since 1982, I have participated in various research projects funded by the Ministry and the Generalitat (the Catalan government), some of them as Principal Investigator. My last three-month stay away from my university was in 2008 at the CRM (Research Centre for Mathematics) in Barcelona, ​​where I collaborated on the organization of a thematic research term.

I have also collaborated on the organization of six scientific meetings and the editing of three books. I have published 51 original research articles, 5 review articles, and 4 popular science articles.

In 1984, I was appointed Associate Professor of Geometry and Topology at the University of Valencia, and in 1999, Full Professor in the same field and at the same university, where I have been teaching various mathematics courses since 1976.

I am part of the group of mathematicians who are striving to better understand the curvature of space. Two types of curvature are distinguished: intrinsic (that which an observer perceives from within the space itself, as humans observe the curvature of the universe) and extrinsic (that which is observed from the outside, as we can observe the curvature of a road). How are these curvatures related to the properties (distances, angles, volumes, energies, sounds, motions, etc.) of space? That is the question we are trying to answer.

For example, in my most cited work (with E. Cabezas-Rivas), we studied the motion of a surface moving at a velocity determined by an extrinsic curvature, with the condition that the volume enclosed by the surface remains constant. This is a problem called "geometric flow," and it is used as a model for the motion of surfaces separating two immiscible fluids, one of which is incompressible. In 1987, it was determined that if the ambient space in which the surface moves is not curved and the surface is initially convex, it evolves, with exponential speed, toward a spherical shape. At the same time, it was indicated that it seemed impossible for the same to occur in curved spaces. Twenty years later, we demonstrated that this was not the case, that the same phenomenon also occurred in ambient spaces with negative curvature, provided the appropriate concept of convexity is used.

The length of time a problem remains unsolved is one of the criteria used to determine the importance of research in mathematics; hence the reference in the previous example to the 20 years that passed between the problem's formulation and its solution. In fact, our interest in geometric flows stems from their use by Perelman (the Russian mathematician who, on June 6, 2010, failed to accept a million-dollar prize) to prove the Poincaré conjecture, which had remained unsolved for a century. To prove our aforementioned result, we also used another (article 23, with A. Borisenko) on convex bodies in negative curvature, which resolved a problem that had been open for 27 years.

The work mentioned  is the first I have written on geometric flows, and that has been my line of research ever since. I was introduced to the study of flows by A. Borisenko. My collaboration with A. Borisenko, E. Cabezas-Rivas, and F. Viñado has contributed to popularizing the study of flows with densities and flow in non-Euclidean environments. I am interested in the motion of the surface itself, the influence of its own and the environment's curvatures on the motion, and also its application to other problems related to curvature and energy, to which members of the team I work with, have made significant contributions, and the relationship of these fluxes to the first eigenvalue of elliptic operators, from which we (with M. C. Domingo Juan and J. Zhu) discovered a surprising result in article 49. Teaching and dedication to my students has also been a substantial part of my work. Communicating with them has always been an incentive to try to better understand mathematics and to be able to explain it. Management has been less to my liking, but understanding its necessity, I have continued to serve as secretary or head of the department (of Geometry and Topology) when required. Furthermore, I have always been a member of some committee (CAT for one or more degree programs, recruitment committees, course coordinator, faculty boards, committees for some curricula, etc.).

[Biography, version in Valencian]

Javier Ortega is an associate professor in the Department of Business Management at the University of Valencia and researcher at INN4ALL <https://www.uv.es/inn4all/>, Innovation, Science and Society Research Group. He has previously worked in advanced service companies (consulting, banking and nautical), as well as in research institutions (during his pre- and post-doctoral studies). His research interests are about the inclusion of the environmental dimension in companies' strategies (eco-innovation). In addition, he has studied university-industry relationships and cooperation between agents of the innovation system in various contexts, participating in regional, national and European projects. The results of his research have been published in scientific journals such as Scientometrics, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, International Journal of Technology Management and Sustainable Development and Arbor, among others. He has conducted several stays at the University of Tampere (in 2009 and 2014), with which he often collaborates, specifically with researchers from the School of Management.

Luis Roca Pérez (Valencia, Spain, 1971) holds a PhD in Biological Sciences and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry at the University of Valencia. He is also the Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Environmental Pollution, Toxicology and Environmental Health. His research focuses on Soil Science, particularly in the fields of soil contamination, composting, and soil–plant relationships.

Since 2025, he has served as President of the Education and Public Awareness Section of the Spanish Society of Soil Science. Throughout his career, he has been the Principal Investigator of several competitive research projects funded by the Spanish National R&D Plan, European programmes such as Horizon Europe and Interreg EuroMED, as well as initiatives of the Regional Government of Valencia, including projects supported by the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI) and Development Cooperation programmes.

In addition, he has been responsible for numerous research contracts and collaboration agreements with companies and foundations. In the field of postgraduate education and research training, he has co-supervised three PhD theses and more than twenty-five Master's theses, actively contributing to the training of researchers and professionals in environmental and agricultural sciences.

]

Francisco Javier Ruiz Sánchez is a biologist and researcher specialising in the evolution of natural systems through geological time by integrating Palaeontology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Botany and Geology at the University of Valencia (Spain).

His career combines scientific research with public management of natural heritage and knowledge transfer. Before joining academia, he held several technical positions within the Regional Government of Valencia, working in biodiversity conservation, protected natural areas, palaeontological heritage management and marine fisheries. He also contributed to the preparation of the 2026–2029 Regional R&D&I Strategy for Safety and Emergency Management.

His research uses fossil micromammals, particularly Paleogene and Neogene rodents, as biological archives of Earth's environmental history to reconstruct the evolution of continental ecosystems and Cenozoic palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic changes. As head of the GIUV-PVC Research Group, he leads a research programme developing quantitative methodologies based on fossil communities to model environmental change, with the aim of improving our understanding of global change processes and supporting natural heritage conservation and management.

Member of International Scientific Board UNESCO on Global Change

Vice-president of International Subcommission on Devonian Stratigraphy

President of Spanish National Committee IGCP UNESCO

Current project: Regenerating the Time Lords: Towards the completion, calibration, digitization and outreach of the geological time scale. Redefining the base of the Emsian; in search of the GSSP. Funding: International Union of Geological Sciences. Duration: 2020-2022. Main researcher

Leader of UV Research Group on Palaeozoic Palaeontology and Palaeogeography of invertebrates, vertebrates and plants (PALPALPAL), ref. GIUV2017-395.

https://www.uv.es/uvweb/servicio-investigacion/es/grupos-investigacion/grupo-1285949714098.html?p2=GIUV2017-395

J. Verrelst} received the M.Sc. degree in tropical land use and in geo-information science both in 2005, and the PhD in remote sensing in 2010 from Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands. His dissertation focused on the space-borne spectrodirectional estimation of forest properties. Since 2010, he has been involved in preparatory activities of FLEX. His research interests include the retrieval of vegetation properties using airborne and satellite data, canopy radiative transfer modelling and emulation, and the analysis of hyperspectral data. He is the founder of the ARTMO software package. In 2017, he received an ERC Starting Grant (\href{https://ipl.uv.es/sentiflex/}{SENTIFLEX}, \#755617), and in 2022, he received an ERC Consolidator Grant (\href{https://leoipl.uv.es/flexinel/}{FLEXINEL},\#101086622), both to work on the development of vegetation products based on the synergy of FLEX and Sentinel-3 data. He is also involved in the CHIME L2 processing.