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Aixerrota Windmill, Getxo, Bizkaia, Spain (October 2020).
Born in Getxo, Basque Country, Spain, in 1996. I am named after my maternal great-grandfather, and my sequence of surnames is: Uriarte (from my father), Baranda (from my mother), Zugazabeitia (from my paternal grandmother), Galán (from my maternal grandmother), Ortiz (from my paternal grandfather's mother), Mena (from my maternal grandfather's mother), Marquijano (from my paternal grandmother's mother), Garay (from my maternal grandmother's mother), and Humaran (from the mother of my paternal grandfather's father), etc. For internationalization and simplicity, I typically preserve only the first one, whose translation from Basque is "between cities". Clearly, I don't preserve Basque pure lineage at all—nor do I intend to. My parents don't speak Basque, but I do try, and the majority of my current teaching duties are in this precious language. I'm proud of Basque culture, but I don't defend it blindly.
I am a descendant of three generations of Engineers from my father's side, but I took the liberty in 2014 of breaking with that tradition by enrolling in the B.S. Degree in Mathematics at the University of the Basque Country (EHU). Four years later, I graduated. The following year, I pursued a M.S. Degree in Computational Engineering and Intelligent Systems. After completing internships at Tecnalia Research and Innovation and the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), I enrolled in September 2019 at the PhD program in Mathematics and Statistics of the EHU under the supervision of Professors David Pardo and Elisabete Alberdi. At that time, I was still without funding to cover my predoctoral research, working under a temporary six-month contract as a research technician.
My father, me, and my grandfather (from left to right) in a family home in Artziniega, Araba, Spain. Digitalized photograph.
My PhD Defense at the Salón de Grados of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the EHU (February 2024).
In February 2020, I was awarded a predoctoral fellowship. Right after signing the contract, the pandemic lockdown hit (thank goodness I had already signed!). The first year and a half of the PhD was tough: it was difficult to socialize and have effective scientific discussions. Additionally, the research group I joined was just beginning to explore the topic of solving PDEs using neural networks. Many state-of-the-art works claimed promising and disruptive results (like the famous PINNs), but upon implementing them, nothing worked as expected. After much frustration, I submitted my first article for review in 2021. In 2022, it was finally published. Afterwards, I secured my second paper, which was published in 2023. In between, I completed short research stays at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences in Austin, Texas, USA, under the mentorship of Prof. Leszek F. Demkowicz, and at the Institute of Mathematics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso in Chile, under the mentorship of Prof. Ignacio Muga. With all that done, I wrote my thesis, in English and Basque, and managed to submit it by Christmas. In February 2024, I defended it and became a (non-life-saving kind of) doctor.
I managed to link the end of my predoctoral contract with six-month temporary postdoctoral contracts at BCAM and the EHU. In July 2024, I applied for a four-year postdoctoral fellowship that covered a two-year stay abroad. I proposed going to Perth, Australia, to be under the mentorship of Prof. Victor M. Calo. In December 2024, my proposal was announced to be successful, just before departing to Chile for a short stay where I led a Summer School. In January 2025, I signed the grant contract and submitted the visa application, which took more than a few months to be successful, and by August I was already on Australian soil. Given that my experience in Australia was going to be limited and that I was getting disillusioned with a research career based on temporary contracts, in February 2026 I applied for an Assistant (tenure-track) Professorship in the Department of Mathematics of the EHU. In July, it was resolved in my favor, and after begging the department a lot, I managed to get my teaching duties postponed until January 2027. In the meantime, I wanted to tie up many loose ends, make the Australian experience a bit longer, and attend a Workshop that was held close to Melbourne in November—I hadn't visited Australia's east coast yet.
Enjoying Perth in the company of a kangaroo (August 2025).
If all goes well, I hope to consolidate my position as an Associate (permanent) Professor in the coming years. I imagine I will keep updating this website accordingly.
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