I am an astrophysicist with extensive postdoctoral experience and a total of one-hundred- and-sixteen peer-reviewed papers published in international journals including two invited reviews. Of my papers, twenty are as first author while a further eleven were first-authored by students under my supervision. Furthermore, I have published a monograph ("The Importance of Binaries in the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Nebulae", 2019, Springer), and contributed chapters to two other books (one of which I also edited). I have presented at numerous national and international conferences (with sixteen invited reviews), as well as chairing multiple international meetings. Collectively, my publications have garnered more than 4000 citations resulting in a Hirsch index, H=35. I am a frequent referee for many international journals and have acted as reviewer for grant proposals to the Polish National Science Centre and Czech Science Foundation, reviewer of observing time proposals to both ESO and Subaru time allocation committees, and examiner of PhD theses presented at Charles University (Cz) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

I completed my PhD in 2011 at the University of Manchester (UK), having spent one year of my doctoral studies providing observational support at the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (Observatorio Roque de Los Muchachos). My observing expertise and scientific excellence led to me obtaining a prestigious fellowship at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile (2011-2014), spending three years combining independent research with science operations at the Paranal Observatory, where I was responsible for the operation and support of the Very Large Telescope. My career has always had a marked observational component, not only in the form of observatory support duties (at the Isaac Newton Group, ESO and later as IAC support astronomer at the 2.5m Nordic Optical Telescope from 2023 to 2024) but also in the acquisition and analysis of astronomical data using a broad range of techniques (in total I have been awarded more than 2000 hours of observing time at competitive international facilities, including ESO and GTC).

The final year of my ESO fellowship was spent at the Universidad de Atacama (Chile), where I took on teaching duties in the form of a core first-year course, "Física 1" (taught in Spanish). Beyond this classroom teaching experience, I have also been responsible for the supervision of several Masters and two PhD students. In 2021, my supervision of several Masters students from the University of Sheffield (UK) was recognised through the award of the title of “Honorary Senior Research Fellow”. My dedication to teaching and formation of the next-generation scientists is underlined by my involvement as Spanish PI of two EU Strategic Partnership grants (“Per Aspera Ad Astra Simul” 2017-2020 and “European Collaborating Astronomers Project: España-Czechia- Slovakia” 2020-2023), awarded more than 600,000€ to aid the international mobility of young researchers at the IAC and partner institutes abroad. These grants have supported the organisation of three summer schools for early career researchers (including one organised by me in La Palma), and a book of refereed reviews, published by Springer and edited by me, with the aim of providing valuable introductions to their respective fields for starting graduate students. The grants also had a strong outreach component ranging from public talks and activities for school children through to a YouTube channel. My passion for outreach is further highlighted by my winning of the STFC-organised outreach contest “I’m a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!’’ in 2014.

At the end of 2014, I joined the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Since then, I have continued to establish myself as a world-leader in binary stellar evolution, more specifically in the use of planetary nebulae as a probe of the crucial, yet very poorly understood, common envelope phase. The high regard in which the community holds me and my work is highlighted by my election to the Organising Committee of the International Astronomical Union's Commission H3: Planetary Nebulae in 2018, and later as Vice-President of the same commission in 2024. Since 2017, I am a member of the development team for the open-source binary modelling package PHOEBE2, leading the v2.2 release in 2020 and the v2.5 release expected in 2026. I was also responsible for implementing support for GTC-OSIRIS//OSIRIS+ into the open-source spectroscopic data reduction package PypeIt, which has now become the principal pipeline for the instrument (including being used by the GTC to deliver science-ready reduced data to programme PIs).