Santiago de Compostela, Thursday, 12 September 2024. The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is incorporating four women in Galicia who are joining, as career civil servants through the general open-access system, the Research Scientist Scale of Public Research Organisations.
The destination assignments and corresponding appointments took place at the Pontevedra headquarters of the Misión Biolóxica de Galicia (MBG), the Institute of Marine Research (Vigo, IIM) and the Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT, Santiago de Compostela).
Appointment at MBG (Pontevedra)
Cristina Fernández Filgueira holds a degree in Biology from the University of Santiago de Compostela (1994) and a PhD in Biology from the University of Vigo (2002). Her doctoral thesis focused on assessing the sustainability of intensive forestry with fast-growing species in Galicia.
She has developed her scientific career at the Lourizán Forestry Research Centre, working on fire ecology. Her work has focused mainly on the effects of forest fires and fire-prevention techniques on natural vegetation regeneration, runoff and soil erosion, as well as on the development and assessment of rehabilitation treatments for burned forest areas. Her research has had a strong applied component and has supported the rehabilitation of areas affected by fires in Galicia and elsewhere in Spain.
From now on, she will carry out her research on forest fires at MBG. She has taken part in 25 research projects, five of them as principal investigator, and is the author or co-author of more than 95 indexed publications.
Appointments at the IIM (Vigo)
Patricia López Sánchez holds a degree in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela (2000) and a PhD in Food Science and Technology from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden (2011).
Her 20-year career includes positions as a corporate researcher at Unilever R&D (Netherlands), and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland (Australia) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She also led the Food Physical Properties Area at Research Institutes of Sweden. In 2022 she returned to Spain to join the University of Santiago de Compostela with a Ramón y Cajal contract.
She specialises in the relationship between the structure and technofunctional properties of ingredients and foods, with particular attention to the impact of processing conditions on the cell wall of plant and aquatic raw materials. In recent years she has led research lines focused on the physicochemical properties of algae, both microalgae and macroalgae, exploring them as a source of sustainable ingredients for food and other technological applications.
She joins the IIM group “Chemistry of Marine Products”. She has participated in 45 research projects in academic and industrial institutions, 15 of them as principal investigator, and has contributed to more than 70 publications.
Cristina Brice Pita holds a PhD in Social and Environmental Sustainability from the University of Aberdeen (2010).
She has more than 25 years of research experience in small-scale fisheries around the world, fisheries governance and fishers’ rights, seafood markets and value chains, sustainable aquatic food systems and seafood traceability. She has taken part in 30 international projects and contributed to more than 100 publications on these topics.
She is an expert in the socioeconomic aspects of fisheries for the United Nations World Ocean Assessment (UN-WOA), co-chair of the ICES Working Group on Social Indicators (WGSOCIAL), and a member of COST Action RethinkBlue. She also participates in several ICES committees and international networks focused on small-scale fisheries. She joins the IIM group “MARSOCIAL: Social Sciences Applied to Marine and Coastal Resources”.
Appointment at INCIPIT (Santiago de Compostela)
María Ximena Senatore holds a degree in Anthropology and Archaeology from the University of Buenos Aires (1995) and a PhD in History from the University of Valladolid (2003).
Over the last two decades she has carried out research in historical archaeology in Antarctica and southern Patagonia. She was a CONICET researcher in Argentina and a distinguished researcher at the University of Alicante under an international talent-attraction contract. She has completed research stays at Durham University, Boston University and INCIPIT-CSIC, among other institutions. She was vice-president of the ICOMOS International Polar Heritage Committee and has been part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Standing Committee of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research since its creation.
Her work has focused on the exploration and incorporation of remote places within the framework of modernity, capitalism and colonialism in Patagonia and Antarctica. Her current projects critically analyse the human presence in Antarctica from the perspective of contemporary archaeology, including theoretical approaches and analysis of occupation processes and heritage development in Antarctic landscapes.
She joins with a profile in polar archaeology and heritage. She has published 6 books and more than 90 articles and has been principal investigator in 15 research projects.
Official research staff at public research organisations
Law 17/2022, of 5 September, amending Law 14/2011 on Science, Technology and Innovation, states that research staff are those who, holding the required qualification in each case, carry out research activity understood as creative work conducted systematically to increase knowledge, including knowledge of human beings, culture and society, and the use of that knowledge to create new applications, transfer it and disseminate it.
Career civil-service research staff serving Public Research Organisations of the General State Administration are grouped into three scales: Research Professor, Research Scientist and Senior Scientist.