María J. Blanco-Prieto - Biography#

Maria Blanco-Prieto received her Pharmacy Degree from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), followed by a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Paris-Sud (France). She completed a post-doctoral training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, (Switzerland) and then joined the University of Navarra where presently she is Full Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology. From January 2006 to August 2013, she was the director of the line of research “Nanotechnologies and Drug Delivery Systems” at the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical technology, University of Navarra.

Her research was awarded with the “UPSA Laboratory award” (1994), Thesis Award of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences from the French National Academy of Pharmacy (1996), Graduate Student Award from “The Nagai Foundation Tokyo” (1996), Paul Neumann Award/APGI (1997), the Prize “Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri” granted by The Government of Navarra (Department of Health) (2004 and 2009) and the IV research prize of the SEFIG (2013), the AECC (Spanish Association against Cancer) (2014), Yuzz Santander Banque Programm (2016), I prize SciencEkaitza 2018 - project NanoCancer (ADItech and Government of Navarra), VII research prize of the SEFIG (2019). Maria Blanco-Prieto serves as a referee in more than 70 journals and among others, for the European Commission, The Spanish Ministry of Education and Health, The French Ministry of Research (ANR), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), The wellcome Trust (United Kingdom), The Royal Society, (United Kingdom), EPSRC (United Kingdom), The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), The Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation (RPF), The South African Medical Research Council (MRC), ETH (ETH Zurich Research Commission), Swiss Cancer League (Switzerland), The Found for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS, Belgium), The National Agency of Scientific Promotion (Argentina), AriSLA (Fondazione Italiana di Ricerca), Royal College of Surgeon (Ireland), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany), Israel Science Foundation (ISC, Israel) and for The Netherlands Organization for Health Research (The Netherlands), KAUST (Saudi Arabia). She is Project Technical Adviser (PTA) for the European Commission (Nanomedecine Subprogramme), member of the Management Committee of COST Action TD1004 “Theragnostics Imaging And Therapy: An Action To Develop Novel Nanosized Systems For Imaging-Guided Drug Delivery” (Agency for Research and Higher education, France) and ANECA (Spanish Evaluation Agency for Higher Education). From February 2014 to February 2018 she was the Vice President of SEFIG (The Spanish Society of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology). In 2017, she was elected as a foreign member of the National Academy of Pharmacy of France - one of the most prestigious entities in the world in her field - in recognition of her research work and as of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy of Galicia. In 2018, she was elected as a board member of the Executive Committee of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Scientists (EUFEPS) being the vice-president since January 2021. From March 2020, she is the President of SEFIG (The Spanish Society of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology). In February 2022 she was elected as a member of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

She is the author or co-author of more than than 160 research papers and book chapters with more than 8.650 cites (H-index 51), 5 editorials, 5 patents and over 180 communications at scientific conferences, many of them as invited speaker.