Dr. Juan José Vilatela García has a BSc in Physics Engineering from UIA, Mexico (2005) and a PhD from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy of the University of Cambridge (2009). In 2011 he founded the Multifunctional Nanocomposites Group (http://www.materials.imdea.org/groups/mng/ ) at IMDEA Materials Institute. He has supervised 7 PhD thesis, is the author of over 100 papers (> 3000 citations), 14 patents (2 industrially exploited) and has an h-index of 30. He has coordinated several European projects, industrial contracts (e.g. Airbus, AFOSR) and is currently the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant to develop structural energy haversting composite materials. He has been awarded the “Juan de la Cierva” and “Ramón y Cajal” fellowships by the Spanish Ministry of Economics, the 2016 young investigator award by the European Society for Composite Materials and the 2018 "Miguel Catalán" under 40 investigator award by the Madrid Regional Government. Since 2014 his is an associate lecturer at the Carlos III de Madrid University and at the Technical University of Madrid in its Airbus-UPM master’s programme. He is a member of the Early Career Researcher Board of IOP Multifunctional Materials.