María Teresa Pérez Prado is a Senior Scientist and has been the 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. From 2018 to 2022, Teresa coordinated the programme on Structural Materials at the Spanish National Science Foundation. 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 about 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, 2020,2021).

Dr. Pérez-Prado got a PhD in Physics at the Complutense University in Madrid in 1998 and an MBA at INSEAD, France, in 2008. After a 2-year postdoctoral stay at the University of California in San Diego, USA, she joined the National Center for Metals Research (Madrid, Spain) in 2001, where she worked as a tenure-track fellow until she was granted a Tenured Scientist position in 2004. Dr. Pérez-Prado has coauthored 140 papers (h 45, ≈8000 citations (Google Scholar)), 1 book (Elsevier, 2004) and 3 patents. Teresa belongs to the Scientific Council of the Nomaten Center of Excellence (Poland), the IRT Jules Verne (France), the Henry Royce Institute (UK), and the European Space Agency (ESA).