Yolanda Fernández Torquemada graduated in Biology (Marine Biology and Environmental Biology) in 1998 and in Marine Sciences in 2000. She has received several public scholarships (2001-2005) and contracts from the University of Alicante (2005-2017) that have allowed her to develop its research activity focused on the ecology of different species of seagrasses, as well as on the detection and monitoring of different environmental impacts on the marine environment (from desalination and wastewater discharges, marina expansions, beach regenerations, SCUBA diving, etc.). Specifically, her thesis was focused on the effects of salinity variations on benthic communities.

She has participated in more than 100 research projects related to this topic, which has allowed her to collaborate actively with other national and international researchers, doing 4 stays in foreign institutions. She participated as author of more than 45 contributions to national and international conferences and 31 papers in indexed journals within the field of marine biology. She has also collaborated in the organization of some international symposia, as well as in the national and international committees about the accomplishment and intercalibration of the Water Framework Directive (Mediterranean Seagrass Group).

From 2009 to 2017 she was an associate professor in the Department of Marine Sciences and Applied Biology of the University of Alicante, where she is currently a tenured professor. Since then she had taught 18 different subjects, mainly related to marine biology and zoology, in Biology and Marine Sciences degrees, and in three official masters (Analysis of Management of Mediterranean Ecosystems, Sustainable Fisheries Management and Sustainable Management and Water Technologies) being the professor responsible for three of these subjects.

In addition, she has been the supervisor of the doctoral thesis "Ionic and physiological responses in seagrasses due to salinity changes" (Aurora Garrote Moreno, 2016), and she continues collaborating in several projects related to the management and evaluation of environmental impacts in the marine environment.