After graduating in 1997 (Biochemistry), I pursued my doctoral studies at the University of León (Spain), and in 2003 I was awarded the prize for the best PhD thesis of the year. During this early period the focus of my research was the biosynthetic pathways of secondary metabolites. As the result of the PhD work, I published 8 papers, including one describing the first designed polyene metabolite obtained by targeted genetic manipulation of a microbial biosynthetic gene cluster (Chemistry & Biology, 2007). Following the completion of my PhD studies, I gained post-doctoral experience working in several projects in Spain, France and Portugal. I integrated projects that ranged from fundamental EU-funded to industrially-driven research and explored different microbiology-related issues. In 2007, I secured competitive funding that allowed me to establish my own independent research line focused on the molecular networks that govern secondary metabolism in Streptomyces. Obtaining competitive funding, together with my scientific competence, allowed me to attract students and establish my own independent research team. Up to 2013, I had supervised (or co-supervised) several undergraduate students, 6 MSc, 4 PhD students and a post-doc fellow. Competitive funding as principal investigator had continuity in 2011 at the second call of the EU FP7 ERA-IB program (165K €). Networking has been a key factor in my evolution as a researcher. I established several international collaborations with recognized scientists of the field such as A. Manteca from Oviedo (Spain) or A. Luzhetskyy from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research (Saarland, Germany), among others. The work developed between 2007-2015 is reflected in a publication record of 20 papers, including the first publication as senior author (PLOS One, 2011). In 2015, my research focus evolved to synthetic biology and the application of its concepts to the heterologous expression of microbial metabolites. My networking efforts, together with my scientific leadership qualities, led to the successful application as the consortium coordinator, of the 2M€ ERA-IB EU-funded TACRODRUGS project. With this project, I was able to kick off and fund a research line focused on the development of molecular tools for the production of natural products. Although adjusting my research line reflected in a lower publication record, the work developed during these last years has already reflected in the publication of 4 manuscripts as senior author (Metabolic Engineering, Antibiotics, Scientific Reports and Marine Drugs). Currently, one manuscript was submitted and is under revision and one more is in the late stages of preparation. During the last years, in addition to what could be considered as “strictly scientific” activities I have engaged in several outreach and communication activities included invited lectures and workshops organization. Since 2013, I am an invited Assistant Professor (Biochemistry) at the Department of Molecular Biology (ICBAS, UP). I want to highlight my collaboration with the EU project “Hybrid Lab Network”. This project aims to promote innovation and good practices for Higher Education bridging areas of Art, Science, Technology/Engineering and Humanities, and fostering knowledge sharing and training. Grounded on my scientific and technical expertise, I developed a genome editing hands-on workshop entitled “CRISPR/Cas9 editing of Streptomyces genome”. By November 2024, I had 38 publications registered at the Web of Science Core Collection with over 1220 citations and an h-index of 20. Of those, 27 papers were published in journals ranked in the first quartile of their subject category (JCR) including 9 as senior author.