Fernando T. Maestre received his BsC. and PhD. in Biology from the University of Alicante in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He did a post-doc at Duke University (USA, 2003-2005) and moved in 2005 to Rey Juan Carlos University (Spain), where he was a Professor of Ecology. He joined the University of Alicante in May 2019, where he is a Professor of Ecology and leads the Dryland Ecology and Global Change Lab. He has conducted research stays in universities and research centres of USA (Montana, Vermont and Duke), UK (Rothamsted Research), Australia (Western Sydney University), Germany (Free and Leipzig Universities) and China (Lanzhou University and Chinese Academy of Sciences). He is the principal investigator of 17 research projects obtained in competitive calls summing more than 6 M €, being the only ecologist working in Spain that has received both a Starting and a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. Professor Maestre has published more than 300 articles in international scientific journals, including 13 articles in Science, Nature and PNAS and 13 “Highly Cited” articles, has presented more than 100 communications in scientific meetings and given invited lectures in more than 15 countries. He is within the top 1% most cited researchers in the world (“Highly Cited Researcher”, Clarivate Analytics) since 2018 and has succesfully supervised 15 PhD theses. He has also received multiple research awards, including the National Research Award Alejandro Malaspina (Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, 2022), the Rei Jaume I Award, Environmental Protection category (Rei Jaume I Foundation, Spain, 2020) Humboldt Research Award (Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, 2015), the Prize for Young Researchers in Life Sciences (Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences, Spain, 2013), the “Miguel Catalán” Prize for Researchers under 40 years (Comunidad de Madrid, Spain, 2014) and a “Distinguished Scientists” Award (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, 2019). He has also been elected as a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2020 and as an Academician ("Académico Correspondiente") of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences in 2023.