Marta Hernández

Marta Hernández Pérez is Doctor in Veterinary Medicine (1998) and a MSc in Food Science and Technology (1999) from the University of León, and she did her PhD at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (CSIC) (2003). During her scientific career, she has completed four international research stays; at the Faculty of Medicine of the Warwick Medical School, at the Veterinary School of the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), at the British Food and Environmental Research Agency in York (FERA, former CSL) and at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Bristol, for which she was granted a postdoctoral fellowship from the Ministry of Science and Technology. In Spain, she has worked for 21 years in two public research centers: (1) as a predoctoral fellow and subsequently as postdoctoral scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (CSIC), (2) at the Agricultural Technology Institute of Castilla and León (ITACyL) enjoyed 5 years of a competitive INIA system researcher contract and later stablished after I3 Evaluation from the National Evaluation Agency and Prospective (ANEP) with the qualification Excellent (06/03/2009) to date. She is currently lab director of the Microbiology and Sequencing laboratory at ITACyL. She also has been involved in teaching activities in two Public Universities in Spain: (1) at the University of Valladolid as a part-time assistant professor in two academic years at the Faculty of Medicine and in three other academic courses at the Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineering of Palencia, and (2) she has been part-time assistant Professor at the Area of Microbiology in the University of Burgos since 2017 to February 2022 when she has become associate professor of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Valladolid. She has supervised four doctoral theses and more than 20 graduate students in the laboratory. She has experience in the organization of courses and seminars and has participated as a speaker for scientific dissemination in several meetings. For the research activity, she has participated in competitive research projects, (1) fifteen projects within the V, VI and VII European Framework Program for Research; (2) eighteen projects of the National Research Plan being in 6 of them as a principal investigator, (3) twenty regional projects funded by the Government of Castilla y León and (4) fifteen research contracts with companies requested to the CDTI and the Economic Development Agency of Castilla and Leon. She is currently responsible for the reference laboratory for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing in Castilla and Leon and run the ECDC project entitled ““Enhancing Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and/or Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) national infrastructures and capacities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in the European Union and European Economic Area”. She has made 188 written scientific contributions and currently has an H-index of 40 with 6573 citations (April 2022): 119 scientific articles in international journals indexed in SCI, 22 book chapters and 1 book, 9 articles in national dissemination magazines, 3 patents, more than 70 contributions to congresses, with at least 2 plenary lectures, 12 oral communications and 48 posters. She was also vice president and member of the scientific committee of the XVII National Congress of Food Microbiology held in Valladolid in 2010. She has been part of the Board of the specialized group "Microbiology of Foods" of the Spanish Society of Microbiology and received in July 2012, the "Special Prize of the food group" awarded by the Spanish Society of Microbiology (SEM) awarding researchers of less than 40 years with an excellent scientific career in the field of food microbiology. She has been secretary of the Association of Food Scientists and Technologists of Castilla y León. She is an academic correspondent for the Academy of Veterinary Sciences of Castilla y León and the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Valladolid.