What brought you to BC3?
It was about 10 years ago. At that point I had been living in the UK for 7 years and I wanted to come back home. At that time both the BC3 and Ikerbasque had been launched and the information about what they were all about was still a little bit “under construction”. I remember that as soon as I knew about the BC3 from the local media I was interested in the knowing the types of expertise the Centre would be looking for. The publicity about BC3 indicated very ambitious areas. In May/June 2008, when the scientific director was officially named, I realized that the person chosen to lead the Centre, Anil Markandya, was also a Professor at Bath University, a city I was living relatively close to at the time. I wrote an email to Anil Markandya and asked him for a meeting to know more about the BC3 and whether my expertise could be useful. I remember that During my short meeting with Anil he was very kind and informative. My anecdote for this visit was that I got a traffic fine for stepping on a bus lane in central Bath, which I only found out about some weeks later. I got lost in the city and I drove through areas there was less traffic.
What are some of your most memorable moments at BC3?
My most memorable moments I suppose have to do with the successful completion of PhD theses that I have supervised (Patricia Gallejones and Guillermo Pardo; and currently Asma Jebari). It is always hard to evaluate success on a personal level but I suppose that completion of a PhD, acceptance of a paper, and successful grants helps your self-steam.
What about your proudest moments?
At the BC3 I have always been extremely proud of the freedom and support to bring my ideas and plans into fruition. I am extremely thankful and can’t help but mention whenever I can (maybe sometimes too often) the support that I received, especially from the admin staff as I enrolled into promoting the Spanish Sci. network for studying climate change and agriculture (RED REMEDIA). It all started with the organization of the first workshop in Bilbao (March 2012) but continued through the years. The quick growth of the network (over 500 people interacting through workshops and/or REMEDIA social media tools) was certainly facilitated by the “bureaucracy-free” conditions of the BC3, through which I found the perfect ecosystem to foster rapid and efficient promotion of the REMEDIA network.
You have been at BC3 for 10 years now! What can we expect from you in the future?
I would like to continue with our small group working on different aspects centred around sustainability in agricultural systems. A success sign for oncoming years will be how much our group can interact with other groups in order to substantiate some of our burning questions and hypotheses on food and climate change.