Teresa M. Coque is a Senior Scientist at the Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS). She received a Ph.D. in Pharmacy (Microbiology) from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1992 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Houston for five years. She leads a research group on the Population Biology of Human Bacterial Pathogens and their Mobile Genetic Elements. Her special interests and expertise include molecular epidemiology, evolutionary biology, and microbial ecology. She serves as a referee of different journals and evaluator of national and international research-funded programs on microbiology and infectious diseases.