Maria de los Desamparados (Amparo) López Rubio
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) at the Instituto de Agroquímica y Tecnología de Alimentos, Valencie, Spain
Topic:
Valorisation of agro-industrial residues for obtaining functional carbohydrates with potential food applications
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/H-2841-2012
https://www.iata.csic.es/en/staff/maria-de-los-desamparados-lopez-rubio
Amparo López-Rubio is a permanent Researcher of IATA-CSIC from 2014 and Deputy Director of the Institute since 2019. She received her Ph.D. in Food Science (2006) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV, Spain) in food packaging, awarded with the “Premio Extraordinario de Tesis Doctoral” from UPV and with the second prize to best doctoral thesis by the “Specialized Polymer Group” from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics (SRSP). After several pre- and postdoctoral stays in top research institutions around the world (KTH, Sweden; ANSTO, Australia; Hasylab, Germany; ANL, USA) where she broadened her knowledge about advanced materials characterization tools, she returned to IATA to open up innovative research lines, being pioneer in the use of X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to understand food structure and its links to functionality, as well as on the use of nanotechnologies in the food area (being an internationally recognized expert on nanoencapsulation for food applications, with 2 highly cited papers in this topic and being the third more prolific author in the world in this area according to the WOS).
The X-ray-based method she established in 2008 to quantify starch crystallinity has been globally adopted by the research community and still receives an average of 50 citations each year. She has published over 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals (>90% Q1 and >40% D1 in the period 2017-2021) with over 6600 citations (H-index of 48 on Web of Science), 8 patents (3 of them under exploitation), as well as numerous book chapters and conference proceedings, with important contributions in the field of sustainable materials for food packaging.
She is editor of several books, special issues and of the journal Q1 journal Nanomaterials (IF 4.03). She has been expert for project evaluation for a number of research granting agencies across the globe (ANSTO, Australia; AAFC, Canada; FONDECYT, Chile; MIUR, Italy; COST expert evaluator, Europe, amongst others), highlighting her appointment as FWO (Flanders Research Foundation, Belgium) expert for the panel “Chemical Engineering, Material Sciences” (from 2015-2017 and 2018-2020) being Scientific Chair of the W&T 6 fellowship panel from 2019 to 2020.
She is Fellow of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics, member of the Nanotechnology group from AESAN and part of the Governing Board of the Interdisciplinary Platform for Sustainable Plastics (SUSPLAST) from CSIC. She has been principal investigator of 3 Spanish National Plan grants (2013-2015; 2016-2018 and 2019-2022), 2 Alba projects, 6 CSIC projects, 1 European ERANET project, 6 regional projects and numerous industrial contracts (working with food companies such as Mahou-San Miguel S.A., Argal S.A. or Bodegas Matarromera or pharma companies such as Casen Fleet Laboratories), having secured public and private funding worth over 2.8 M€ while working at IATA. She is also very compromised with research training (having supervised 7 PhD thesis and 6 more ongoing, being associate professor of the University of Valencia and participating in several international Master courses) dissemination (being chair of the Dissemination Committee of IATA and having participated, only in 2021, in 10 dissemination events).