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Biography

My main area of research is galaxy evolution over cosmological timescales. In particular, I study the structure, kinematics and stellar populations of galaxies both in the nearby universe and in the distant universe. The comparative analysis of these galaxy properties at differente epochs allows us to describe how galaxies have evolved in the last 12 billion years.

 

I graduated in Physics and Astronomy in 1989 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain). I obtained my PhD at the University of Durham (England) in 1994. My first post-doctoral position was held at the University of California Observatories in Santa Cruz (USA), working on the "Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe" Survey. In 1998, I was awarded a Hubble Fellowship at Yale University. I joined the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida (UF) in 2001 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. I became a tenured Associate Professor at UF in 2003, and Full Professor in 2009. From 2009 to 2012 I was appointed Chair of the UF Department of Astronomy. In 2013, I co-founded Satlantis, a UF spinoff, and became its Chief Technology Officer to develop state-of-the-art space cameras for the new generation of microsatellites. Besides the Hubble Fellowship, I have received several awards, including a Distinguished Professorship at UCM (2006), UF-CLAS International Educator of the Year (2011), UF Technology Innovator (2014, 2015), UF Faculty Entrepreneur of the Year (2018), Distinguished Researcher “Beatriz de Galindo” from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2020), and the UF-CLAS Term Professorship (2021-2024).