After finishing the Bachelor in Biology (itinerary Biotechnology) at the University of Alicante (Spain; UA from now on) in 2000, I was incorporated to the “Microbial Molecular Ecology” group of the UA, headed by Prof. Josefa Antón, and started working as a researcher and FPU-UA grant holder exploring the microbial diversity in modern freshwater stromatolites and hypersaline environments. In this period, I applied molecular ecology techniques to the study of (un)cultured prokaryotic communities from environmental samples (mainly based on the construction and analysis of 16S rRNA gene libraries, fluorescence in situ hybridization and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis). My PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Josefa Antón and Dr. Ramón Rosselló-Mora, was focused on metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches to the study of extremely halophilic viral communities (2010). During my PhD, I used techniques such as the construction of metagenomic libraries and microarrays, the extraction and amplification of viral RNAs for (meta)transcriptomics, the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and bioinformatic tools for the assembly, annotation and analyses of DNA sequences. I have also collaborated in other works carried out by the “Microbial Molecular Ecology” group, like the description of the extremely halophilic bacterium Salinibacter ruber (genomic and transcriptomic levels), their viruses, and the study of prokaryotic and viral communities from hypersaline environments around the world, with a special emphasis to the description, by single-cell genomics, of an abundant group of ubiquitous halophilic Bacteroidetes. Since August 2018 I belong to the permanent staff of the department of Physiology, Genetics and Microbiology at the UA, as Associate Professor of Microbiology (“Profesor contratado doctor”) although my teaching activity started in 2003.

My career as a researcher and teacher has resulted in 37 publications. Among them, a special emphasis to the article “Unveiling virus-host interactions within the microbial dark-matter”, published in Nature Communications in 2014. Along my scientific career, I have carried out several stays in different research centers: The University of Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Spain), the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Bremen, Germany), the Astrobiology Center (INTA-CSIC, Madrid, Spain) and the Institute for Marine Sciences (ISMAR-CNR, Venice, Italy, as a postdoctoral grant holder from the “José Castillejo” program). Also, I have participated in 31 research projects (3 as PI or principal investigator) and 6 teaching projects, outlining the project Advanced toolbox for rapid and cost-effective functional metagenomic screening - Microbiology meets microfluidics (METAFLUIDICS), funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 program. Finally, I have attended in 55 scientific meetings (23 at the international level) and I have acted as reviewer for some journals in the field of Microbiology (including: FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Microbial Ecology, BMC Microbiology or Systematic and Applied Microbiology) and as review editor of the Editorial Board of Virology, a specialty of Frontiers in Microbiology and Frontiers in Plant Science.