Miguel Ángel Muñoz-Bañón received his PhD in 2022 from the University of Alicante, specialising in robotics and automation as a member of the AUROVA research group. In 2023, he was awarded the National Prize for the Best PhD Thesis in Robotics (for theses defended in 2022), granted by the Spanish Committee of Automation (CEA) and sponsored by Robotnik Automation. This distinction highlights the scientific contribution, originality, and relevance of his work.

Over the past few years, he has developed a solid and internationally recognised research career in mobile robotics, including localisation, path planning, and photorealistic 3D reconstruction of natural environments. His scientific production comprises JCR-indexed journal articles, including publications in leading venues such as IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, or The International Journal of Robotics Research. He also participated in international conferences at the top-tier robotics conferences ICRA and IROS, where he contributed both publications and oral presentations.

His international experience has significantly strengthened his research profile. He completed a nine-month stay at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2021 and subsequently (2024-2025) worked for one year and four months at the Oxford Robotics Institute (University of Oxford), one of the world’s leading centres in robotics research, with an active current collaboration. These stays enabled him to participate in highly competitive scientific environments, develop advanced expertise in robotics for natural and unstructured environments, and establish strong collaborations with internationally recognised groups.

He has participated in several publicly funded research projects as a hired researcher, PhD student and a postdoctoral collaborator. Among them, the Horizon Europe project “Digital Analytics and Robotics for Sustainable Forestry” (DigiForest) stands out, involving collaboration with entities such as ETH Zurich or the Technical University of Munich. He has also contributed to two university-led projects funded by private industry (Smurfit Kappa). His research has been supported by two competitive PhD fellowships (ACIF/2019/088 and BEFPI/2021/069) and two postdoctoral fellowships (CIAPOS/2023/101 and CIBEST/2023/44).

In addition to his research activity, he has developed a meaningful teaching profile. As an Assistant Professor, he has contributed to university-level training and currently co-supervises a doctoral thesis entitled “Robotic Systems in Unstructured Environments:
Localisation, Navigation, and Planning.”