The Sumatra 2004 and Tohoku 2011 earthquakes and consequent tsunamis brought into sharp focus the need to understand geohazards. The focus of my research has been the identification and characterization of fault architecture and their earthquake potential, which is key issue in the modern seismic hazard assessment models. In particular, I examine the imprints engendered by the occurrence of large earthquakes in the geomorphological and geological records both onshore and offshore. Such observations using a variety of geophysical and geological tools are critical inputs to estimate the parameters that characterize the seismic cycle of the faults. In addition, my other research efforts examine the relation between regional stress field changes after large earthquakes and dynamic triggering of subsequent seismicity as well as seismic zonation and hazard assessment. As a consequence of all my acquired knowledge, I have participated in the development and compilation of databases of active faults that contain architecture and characteristics (e.g., fault segment lengths, stepover distance, recurrence interval, and most recent event).
I am a process-oriented scientist and as such, there is always a fieldwork component to my research, whether it be onshore or offshore. I have vast field experience and I have participated in numerous onshore campaigns to study paleoseismological trenches as well as offshore cruises to acquire geological and geophysical data. I have participated in many cruises with my responsibility ranging from chief scientist (SHAKE 2015) to shift manager responsible for QA/QC of data acquisition, processing and interpretation. In addition, I have teaching experience as an assistant professor at graduate and undergraduate levels at the universities of Barcelona and Lisbon. I also co-supervised a student through their final engineering degree thesis at UPC.
I received my BSc in Geology on September 1999 at the University of Barcelona (UB, Spain). While a postgraduate student at the UB, I received a FAUST EU project fellowship in May 2000 and a SAFE EU project fellowship in February 2001. In August 2001, I was awarded a fellowship by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to carry out my PhD, supervised by Dr. Perea Santanach and Dr. Eulàlia Masana at the RISKNAT Group (natural hazards) of the Department of Geodynamics and Geophysics at UB, which I obtained in September 2006. The main focus of the PhD was to develop of a new methodology to localize, classify and characterize active faults in the northwestern margin of the Valencia trough and their introduction in a seismic hazard study. Two of the identified active faults were the Amposta and the Gulf of Roses faults, sources of the seismic crisis related to the Castor Project gas injection in the Castellón area (September-October 2013) and of an earthquake of magnitude (Ml) 4.3 greatly felt in the Gulf of Roses area (October 29th 2015), respectively. Thus, this seismic activity in some of the identified faults may validate my PhD results and, thus, shows the importance of conducting this type of studies even in low strain zones. During this period, I acquired fundamental knowledge in active tectonics, tectonic geomorphology, paleoseismology and seismotectonics. In the summer of 2003, I carried out a 6-month stay at the University of Bergen (Norway), to learn the basics of seismic hazard assessment under the supervision of Dr. Kuvvet Atakan. All along my PhD, I participated in numerous geological field surveys in Eastern and Southeastern Spain and in two marine geosciences cruises in the Gulf of Cadiz and Alboran Sea, all of them focused in the localization and study of active faults. My PhD period gave me the opportunity to work with researchers from different disciplines (e.g. seismologists, geophysicists or marine geologists) and to develop international collaborations (University of Bergen and University of Lisbon).
From October 2006 to February 2007, I secured an assistant research position at the GEOMODELS Research Intitute (UB) to participate in the production of two geological maps E.1:25000, in which I was in charge of the cartography and description of the Quaternary units. From April 2007 until November 2011, I joined the Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL) Associated Laboratory from the University of Lisbon (Portugal) as a researcher and assistant professor. My main research at IDL was related to active tectonics and paleoseismology in different fault systems in Portugal. During those years: a) I started new research topics related to Coulomb stress failure and stress and strain variations; b) I was involved in different geophysical field surveys (electromagnetic methods and GPS) to detect and monitor very slow active fault systems; c) I participated in three marine geoscience surveys (2008, 2010 and 2011) in the Mediterranean, the Alboran Sea and the Gulf of Cadiz; and d) I collaborated in some analogical modeling. In 2009, I realized that there were great scientific challenges involved in working in submarine active tectonics and paleoseismology, and I decided to improve my skills and knowledge in marine geosciences. The same year, the organizing committee of the XII Colombian Geological Congress and the National University of Colombia-Medellín invited me as an expert to teach the course "Neotectonics and Paleoseismology" and to give some seminars in this same topics. Later in 2010, I was invited to participate in the expert panel formed to discuss about the new seismotectonic zonation of the Iberian Peninsula and the active fault databases in development (QAFI and SHARE project databases), and to compile and introduce the needed scientific information in these databases. All these data has been used in the Spanish seismic codes and in European seismic hazard assessment projects. I was in the organizing and scientific committees of the first Iberian meeting on active faults and paleoseismology, the IBERFAULT 2010, and I was invited to the ESF Research Conference “Submarine Paleoseismology: The Offshore Search of Large Holocene Earthquakes”.
In 2010, I was eager to take a new challenge and decided in focusing my research on a new emerging topic of submarine active faults and paleoseismology. After being awarded with a “Juan de la Cierva” Postdoctoral project in December 2011, I joined the Dr. Eulàlia Gràcia group at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) at CSIC (Barcelona, Spain) with the aim of strengthening my skills and knowledge on marine geology and offshore active faults. During that time, I greatly improved my abilities and expertise in bathymetric morphological analysis and in seismo-stratigraphic and structural interpretation of seismic profiles, and I learnt fundamental concepts of multichannel seismic processing. In 2012 and 2014, I participated in two marine geoscience surveys, in the Gulf of Cadiz and in the Mexican Pacific Ocean, respectively. Along all those years at the ICM, I was also involved in onshore paleoseismological fieldwork in the Acambay Graben (Mexico) and in the Alhama de Murcia fault in Lorca (Spain). As an expert, I was consulted about the last modifications done in the seismotectonic zonation map of the Iberian Peninsula and in the second and, present, third versions of the QAFI database. I was member of the organizing and scientific committees of the IBERFAULT 2014, the second Iberian meeting on active faults and paleoseismology. In 2014, the organizing committee of the third Conference about Risk Management (Colombia) invited me to teach the course "Neotectonics and Paleoseismology" and professors from UNC-Medellín invited me to give a seminar on this same topic.
In 2015, I became a freelance consultant geologist. In my new role, I was contracted to participate in two geoscientific cruises, being the chief scientist in the SHAKE cruise, with the responsibility to plan and change the scientific operations, coordinate the scientific and technical crew, communicate and discuss the different options with the captain of the research vessel and to write the scientific report and to coordinate the writing of the outreach blog of the mission. At the beginning of 2016, I secured a contract with Iberdrola Ingeniería y Construcción to participate in the first Senior Seismic Hazard Analysis Committee (SSHAC Level 3) project in Spain. The aim of this project is to update the seismic characterization of the sites of the six Spanish NPP.
In August 2016, I joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California San Diego (San Diego, US) after being awarded with a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global-Fellowship project (PALEOSEISQUAKE, Project 657769 H2020-MSCA-IF-2014 ; 2016-2019) hosted by the ICM-CSIC (Barcelona, Spain). The main objective of this project was to implement a new approach to characterize the seismic potential of active faults, with special emphasis on recognizing single net event displacements and obtain more precise net slip-rates in underwater faults. To achieve this objective I analyzed different active fault systems located in the California margin (US) and Alboran Sea (southeastern Iberia), while based at SIO for two years (2016-2018) and, later, at the ICM-CSIC in the return phase (2018-2019).
In 2019 I was awarded with the grant "Atracción de Talento Investigador" funded by the Madrid Community and in July the same year I joined the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM; Spain) to carry on UNrIDDLE, the project related to the grant (Project 2018-T1/AMB-11039; 2019-2023). The aim of UNrIDDLE was to unveil the deep structure, geometry and upper Neogene deformation history, with emphasis in the upper Quaternary, of large strike-slip faults to evaluate their expected seismicity rates related to the collision between Africa and Iberia. To achieve the objective it was planed to acquire and analyze seismic data to produce 3D models of the fault systems, date sediments to determine the earthquake history of the faults and model the seismicity rates of the fault using new numerical modeling tools.
In 2022, I secured a researcher permanent position at the ICM-CSIC (Barcelona, Spain) to continue working in active faults characterization and seismic and tsunami hazards.