Juan Antonio Belmonte Avilés (Murcia, 1962) is a Research Professor who holds a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of La Laguna (1989), where he has also studied Egyptian hieroglyphics. He develops his work at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), where he carries out research in stellar and planetary physics and cultural astronomy. He is associated with the Department of Astrophysics of the University of La Laguna, in which he has taught stellar physics, astrobiology, classical astronomy, history of astronomy and archaeoastronomy and has directed several doctoral theses. He has been Director of the Science and Cosmos Museum of Tenerife (MCC, 1995-2000), President of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC, 2005-2011), the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC, 2017-2020), the IAU Commission C4 World Heritage and Astronomy (2021-2024), and the Time Allocation Committee (CAT) of the Canary Islands Observatories (2003-2012). He received in 2012 the "Carlos Jaschek" Award in Cultural Astronomy for his contribution to the field. He is currently deputy editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy and consultant editor of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology and has been co-editor of Archaeoastronomy: the Journal for Astronomy in Culture, reference journals in the discipline. Outreach specialist, he has given multiple lectures and courses on his research topics in various venues such as Harvard, Lima or La Plata Universities or UNESCO headquarters in Paris. His main research lines have been asteroseismology, exoplanetology, and cultural astronomy. The first one was his original work-line in stellar physics on which he defended his PhD Thesis. Since then he has participated in several leading projects in this line and directed 3 PhD theses. In 2000, after completing his duties as MCC Director, he became involved in a new promising research line in astrophysics: exoplanetology. Since then he has done leading work in the field, such as the discovery of TrES-1, the first transiting planet orbiting a brilliant solar-type star, and has directed 3 PhD theses on the subject. In 2018 (2026 2nd Ed.) he co-edited, with Hans Deeg, Springer’s “Handbook of Exoplanets” [HoE], book of reference in the field. Shortly after completing his PhD, he became involved in cultural astronomy studies (archaeo- and ethnoastronomy), a discipline in which he has pioneered Spain and has become a world leading expert. In recent years he has developed large-scale research on the astronomical traditions of ancient Mediterranean cultures and beyond, with special dedication to the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands, Egypt and the Middle East (notably Anatolia and the Levant). In particular, in the 2000s, he was the Spanish representative in the Egyptian-Spanish Mission of Archaeoastronomy of ancient Egypt. One of his major contributions to the field has been Springer’s "Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy" (Heidelberg, 2014) where he has been scientific two sections’ editor and the author or co-author of 12 contributions. In 2017 he supervised the first PhD on archaeoastronomy ever defended in a Spanish Astrophysics Department and recently supervised a secondd one. Intimately related to this discipline, he has been deeply involved in the development of the "Astronomy and World Heritage" initiative within UNESCO and the IAU. This was recently successful (in declaring a World Heritage site: the cultural landscape “Risco Caído and the sacred mountains of Gran Canaria” (2019) and Talayotic Menorca (2023) .