Covadonga Alonso earned, from the Universidades Complutense and Autonoma de Madrid, a MD (1984) and a PhD (1989). From 1989 to 1991, she worked as a postdoc at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston EEUU. She is now the Director of the Department of Biotechnology, INIA, CSIC. She has been the Chair of the Asfarviridae study group of the ICTV, CEO of the Global African Swine Fever Research Alliance (GARA) and acting vice president of the Board of the Spanish Society for Virology. She does research in cell biology, microbiology, and virology.