Biography

I have been associate professor of mechanical engineering at UCO since 2016 and belong to the research group Fluvial Dynamics and Hydrology (TEP248-PAIDI). I focused my research activity to advance knowledge base regarding hydrological processes and water quality modeling in Mediterranean catchments and on the uncertainty assessment in hydrological and environmental processes. In particular, I have dedicated my attention to modeling the hydrometeorological variables involved in the water and energy balance at their representative spatial and temporal scales for their integration in a physically based distributed hydrological modelling tool including uncertainty assessment. To this end I proposed a topographic solar radiation algorithm for the generation of time-series solar radiation maps using limited data and simple methods. My research on water quality modeling has contributed to the study of environmental protection in Mediterranean areas and the development of parametric models and indexes for the spatial characterization of the nonpoint source pollution potential. The use of remote sensing data to characterize and monitor hydrological and land-use parameters also plays an important role in my work. I later included stochastics analysis to properly account for inherent uncertainty in hydrology with operational applications in the computation of environmental flows in semi-arid environments as well as for real time updating of flood forecasting. In this latter topic, I recently got funding (47.419,37 €) in a competitive call leading a project to develop a tool for the stochastic forecast of river flows at different temporal scales for its use in the operational management of run-of-river hydropower facilities.

I completed my PhD studies and my early-stage researcher career entirely funded by public competitive calls, starting with a grant (2003/04) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education to initiate research activities, later as a PhD candidate at UCO by the Andalusian Ministry of Science and Innovation (2004/08) and finally, as a PhD researcher of the Juan de la Cierva program at the Univ. of Granada (2014/16). I have also carried out several stays abroad (>1 year) funded by competitive calls at the University of Leuven (Belgium), at Brown University (USA), at the VCU (USA) and at the University of Bolonia (Italy). As a result, I have co-authored several indexed papers and contributions to international conferences setting the basis of a long-term international collaborative research framework that lasts nowadays.

Regarding dissemination activities I have participated in several actions devoted to the transfer of knowledge and technological tools for the hydrological modeling of watersheds to Andalusian water management public entities since 2009. I collaborated in the assessment of the environmental flow regime in the definition of the hydrologic plan of the Atlantic Andalusian watershed with the private technical enterprise (FULCRUM-INITEC) in 2009. I also participated in a R+D transfer contract of the CENIT 2009 program and was the principal researcher in a research contract with an enterprise (DBO5) for the computation of water quality variables in reservoirs from remote sensing data.

I have supervised 3 PhD students (2012, 2014 and 2020), all of them qualified with the highest honors, 3 grants for young researchers (research initiation scholarships) and 20 MSc students from 2009 to present, and actively participated in different national and international projects, including LIFE, FP7, and H2020 programs. I have been a researcher in projects that sum up to 3 M€ in R+D+i since 2009, whose transference meant the III award to transference from the Social Board UCO (2010) and the register of 3 open-source hydrological simulation tools with user graphic interface in English and Spanish. My current Scopus h-index is 10 (Scholar h-index: 12) and I have authored 31 papers (Scopus indexed) and 65+ conference proceedings.

I act as reviewer for 10+ international scientific journals and from 2017 on, I have been the Coordinator at UCO of the Bio-geo-chemical flow dynamics inter-university doctoral program with mention through the Excellence in 2011 (MEE2011-0270). I have also been part of the scientific committee and co-chair in several international conferences since 2013 at the EGU in Vienna (Austria), in 2014 at the 11^th International Conference on Hydroinformatics in New York (USA) and in 2021 at the National Conference on Mechanical engineering in Jaen (Spain).

I was appointed as collaborator of the Spanish Research Agency in 2019, in the Civil Engineering Panel, and have reviewed up to 7 proposals of the national research call. I was appointed in June 2021 by the European Research Executive Agency and have recently acted as an expert evaluating 8 proposals of a topic within Cluster 6: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment of the Horizon Europe Program 2021.