Maria Concepcion SERRANO profile

I graduated in Biology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in 2002, with an honor license award from UCM. Then, I was awarded a predoctoral scholarship FPU (MEC, 2003-2006). In 2006, I obtained my PhD Degree in Biology, receiving the maximum grade and an honor PhD award from the Faculty of Biology (UCM). This training period defined the foundation of my research career in biomaterials (materials for health). It included a 3-month stage at the Biomedical Engineering Department of Northwestern University. A first postdoctoral training of 1.5 years at the same research group followed, setting up the use of endothelial progenitor cells. From 2008 to 2010, I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship for stays abroad (MICINN) to continue my research as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University (USA), with a major training in materials science and biomedical engineering. Afterwards, I returned to Spain granted a postdoctoral fellowship Juan de la Cierva (MINECO, 2010-2013) at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC). In 2014, I started my last postdoctoral stage with a postdoctoral fellowship Miguel Servet I (ISCIII, 2014-2017) at the Hospital Nacional de Parapléjicos (HNP-SESCAM). This stage allowed me starting my independent research in biomaterials for neural tissue engineering. Since 17/032017, I am a tenure track scientist at ICMM-CSIC, in the Materials for Medicine and Biotechnology Group (MaMBIO). I have been (I am) principal investigator (PI) of 6 research projects to date (total funding 1,14 M€). At presents, I am the coordinator of the European project Piezo4Spine (Horizon Europe PathFinder; 2023-2026; 3.5 M€ total, 1.1 M€ for CSIC). I have co-authored more than 70 publications, co-authored over 100 communications in national and international conferences and supervised 4 PhD thesis (Ana Domínguez-Bajo, 2020, UCM; André Girão, 2023, Univ. Aveiro; Ana Arché, 2023, UCM; Esther Benayas, 2026, UAM).

Since its early beginning in 2002, my research has been focused in the design and development of biomaterials for applications in Biomedicine in the context of Tissue Engineering, including a wide spectrum of materials and applications. My main focus in the last decade has been neural tissue engineering, in particular, spinal cord injury.

ORCID: 0000-0002-5010-644X; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5010-644X Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MVPeqnsAAAAJ&hl=es