Eukaryotic Microorganisms as Sources of Bioproducts

Cristina Gonzalez-Fernandez received her PhD degree in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology at the University of Valladolid (2008). She carried out her doctoral thesis in the field of livestock wastes treatment for the removal of organic matter by means of mechanical and photosynthetic oxygenation on the liquid matrix and biogas production on the solid matrix. Previously to that, she worked at the Environmental Engineering Department in the University of Cincinnati (USA) where she also obtained a Master on Environmental Science (2005). She got a postdoc position at the Biotechnology Lab in the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (LBE-INRA, France) to work on the optimization of biogas production using microalgae. Nowadays, her research is focused on the recovery of carbon from wastes via biotechnological means. She is co-author of around 100 scientific publications and reviewer of international journals. Additionally, she has been involved in European and national funded research projects, as well as projects with private companies. She has supervised 5 PhD Thesis, and 20 Master Thesis and Final Year Projects. Today, Cristina González is Associate Professor at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology of Valladolid University.

Dr. Tomás-Pejó received her PhD with International Mention from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid in 2009. After that, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at CIEMAT for one year and joined the Industrial Biotechnology Group at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) for 3 years. In 2014, she was awarded a MARIE Curie-AMAROUT grant to join the Biotechnological Processes Unit at IMDEA Energy where she is now permanent Senior Assistant Researcher and Ramón y Cajal Fellow.

Dr. Tomás-Pejó has authored more than 70 publications and is co-inventor of 2 patents. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal FEMS Yeast Research and Associate Editor of Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts. She has been a member of the Evaluation Committee in 3 PhD defenses and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of 4 International Conferences. Dr. Tomás-Pejó has supervised 3 PhD students and is currently supervising 3 more.

She has participated in more than 20 R&D projects, has been principal investigator of 3 national projects and coordinator of 1 MSCA doctoral network. Dr. Tomás-Pejó is chairing the COST Action YEAST4BIO “Non-conventional yeast for the production of bioproducts” (2019-2024), which already involves more than 150 scientists from 34 countries.