Prof. Dr. Maria Cecilia Poletti studied chemical engineering at Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina. 2002 she started her doctoral studies at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria. Her Ph.D. work about titanium alloys and metal matrix composites was defended in 2005. She then worked as a university assistant at the same university before moving to Graz University of Technology in 2011 for a tenure track position at the Institute of Materials Science, Joining, and Forming. In 2013, she became the leader of the Modelling and Simulation group and deputy head of the institute. She carries out activities in applied and fundamental research on topics related to the solid-state and additive manufacturing processing of metallic materials. The main objectives of her research are to understand and describe physical phenomena during the processing of metallic materials involving solidification, plastic deformation, static and dynamic restoration, phase transformation, and sintering. Between 2017 and 2025, she led the Christian Doppler Laboratory for design of high-performance alloys by thermomechanical processing.