Amparo López-Rubio

Topic: Methods and Technologies for Sustainability

Amparo López-Rubio is a permanent Researcher of IATA-CSIC from 2014 and Director of the Institute since December 2023. She received her Ph.D. in Food Science (2006) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV, Spain) in food packaging, awarded with the “Premio Extraordinario de Tesis Doctoral” from UPV and with the second prize to best doctoral thesis by the “Specialized Polymer Group” from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics (SRSP). After several pre- and postdoctoral stays in top research institutions around the world (KTH, Sweden; ANSTO, Australia; Hasylab, Germany; ANL, USA) where she broadened her knowledge about advanced materials characterization tools, she returned to IATA to open up innovative research lines, being pioneer in the use of X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to understand food structure and its links to functionality, as well as on the use of nanotechnologies in the food area (being an internationally recognized expert on nanoencapsulation for food applications, with 2 highly cited papers in this topic and being the third more prolific author in the world in this area according to the WOS). The X-ray-based method she established in 2008 to quantify starch crystallinity has been globally adopted by the research community and still receives an average of 50 citations each year. She has published over 210 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals (>90% Q1 and >40% D1 in the period 2007-2023) with over 9500 citations (H-index of 59 on Web of Science), 8 patents (3 of them under exploitation), as well as numerous book chapters and conference proceedings, with important contributions in the field of sustainable materials for food packaging. She has been editor of several books, special issues and of the journals Q1 journals Food Chemistry (IF 8.5), International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (IF 7.7) and Nanomaterials (IF 4.4). She has been expert for project evaluation for a number of research granting agencies across the globe (ANSTO, Australia; AAFC, Canada; FONDECYT, Chile; MIUR, Italy; COST expert evaluator, Europe, amongst others), highlighting her appointment as FWO (Flanders Research Foundation, Belgium) expert for the panel “Chemical Engineering, Material Sciences” (from 2015-2017 and 2018-2020) being Scientific Chair of the W&T 6 fellowship panel from 2019 to 2020. She is Fellow of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics, member of the Nanotechnology group from AESAN and part of the Governing Board of the Interdisciplinary Platform for Sustainable Plastics (SUSPLAST) from CSIC. She has been principal investigator of 4 Spanish National Plan grants (2013-2015; 2016-2018, 2019-2022 and 2023-2026), 2 Alba projects, 7 CSIC projects, 1 European ERANET project, 3 Horizon Europe project, 9 regional projects and numerous industrial contracts (working with food companies such as Mahou-San Miguel S.A., Argal S.A., Hispanagar S.A. or Bodegas Matarromera or pharma companies such as Casen Fleet Laboratories), having secured public and private funding worth over 4 M€ while working at IATA. She is also very compromised with research training (having supervised 12 PhD thesis and 7 more ongoing, being former associate professor of the University of Valencia and participating in several international Master courses) and dissemination (being chair of the Dissemination Committee of IATA and having participated, only in 2023, in more than 10 dissemination events).