Prof. Dr. María Vallet-Regí

Maria Vallet-Regí is the leader of the Smart Biomaterials Research Group of UCM integrated in CIBER-BBN and IIS imas12. She was the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant for a polyvalent mesoporous nanosystem for bone diseases and has been awarded many important international prizes. She is a member of the Spanish Academies of Pharmacy, Engineering, and European Doctors, the International College of Fellows of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE), and the American Institute for Biomedical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She is widely regarded for her contributions to biotechnology and medicine. She is included among the top 2% of researchers in the world (PLoS Biology in 2020). She was a highly cited researcher in 2018 (Clarivate Analytics). She is recognized as a pioneer in the field of ceramic materials applied to medicine. On the one hand, she has been working in the biomaterials area, developing bioceramics for bone grafting applications and scaffolds for regenerative biomedicine. On the other hand, she has intensely investigated nanocarriers of different natures to deliver therapeutic agents to diseased tissues without affecting healthy organs. She was the pioneer who suggested introducing drugs into the pores of mesoporous silica materials, which inspired thousands of publications worldwide involving mesoporous silica nanoparticles for drug delivery.