María Teresa Pérez Prado is Senior Scientist and Head of the Sustainable Metallurgy group at IMDEA Materials Institute since 2008. She was Head of Department between 2014 and 2017 and Deputy Director of the institute between 2017 and 2021. Her research focuses on the development of advanced metals for a greener world. She is passionate about contributing to the training of future leaders and creating value for society from science-based innovations. She was included in the Stanford list of world´s top 2% scientists (Ioannidis et al. PLoS Biol, 2020).

Since 2018 she manages the programme on Structural Materials at the Spanish National Science Foundation and is a member of the advisory board of several international scientific institutions, including the NOMATEN Center of Excellence (Poland), the IRT Jules Verne (France), the European Space Agency, and the Henry Royce Institute (UK).

Teresa got a PhD in Physics at the Complutense University in Madrid in 1998. Her doctoral research was carried out at the Spanish Center for Metals Research (CENIM) and at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (USA). After a 2 year postdoctoral stay at the University of California in San Diego (USA) she joined CENIM in 2001 as a tenure-track Ramón y Cajal fellow until she was granted a Tenured Scientist position in 2004. She completed her education with an MBA at INSEAD (France) in 2008, where her team project, a spin-off company based on technology developed at Caltech and the University of Pittsburgh, was awarded the 1st prize at the Business Venture Competition.

She has coauthored 129 papers (h 41, ≈6000 citations (Scopus)), 1 book (Elsevier, 2004) and 3 patents, has advised 8 PhD theses and has led 22 research projects funded by EU, industrial and Spanish sources. She receives periodically invitations to participate in project evaluation panels of international research funding agencies and to deliver lectures globally at metallurgy & materials events. She was recently featured in national mass media (https://www.elmundo.es/ciencia-y-salud/ciencia/2019/06/20/5d0a8d04fdddff33048b46de.html).