Maria Garcia Parajo

Dr. Maria Garcia-Parajo received her MSc in Solid State Physics at Imperial College London, UK and PhD in Physical Electronics in 1993 at the same Institute. After a two-years postdoc at the L2M-CNRS, Bagneux, France, she moved in 1996 to the Applied Optics group of the University of Twente, the Netherlands, where she worked in the fields of nanophotonics, single molecule fluorescence detection, photophysics and dynamics. In 2005 se moved to Barcelona as ICREA Research Professor, first hosted at the IBEC - Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and since July 2011 at the institute of Photonic Sciences, ICFO, leading the Single Molecule Biophotonics group. Her research focuses on the development of advanced optical techniques to the study of biological processes at the single molecular level on living cells. She has co-authored more than 120 publications in peer-reviewed international Journals and delivered more than 140 talks at international conferences and workshops upon invitation. She coordinates several international research projects and is a member of the executive board of the Spanish Biophysical and the International Fluorescence Societies. She has been teaching several specialized courses in fluorescence microscopy and single molecule detection in the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Germany, UK and Spain.