An image of the Running of the Bulls, Pamplona, Spain
I was born in Pamplona, a small town in the north of Spain, 25 years ago. Maybe you have heard about my hometown because every year, 8 days of July, we hold the running of the bulls event during the Sanfermines, a folkloric event that transforms the city into the party capital of the world. Before you ask, I have never run in front of a bull nor do I have intentions of doing it in the future.

In 2008 I moved to Barcelona to study a double simultaneous degree on Telecommunications and Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia - BarcelonaTech. I enjoyed engineering so much that after my third year of studies I decided to complement my formation getting more exposed to the field of electronics and I enrolled in another degree, Electronics Engineering. These unique triple-major studies with a focus on telecommunications have provided me with a wide understanding on how communication systems work, from the tiniest transistor to the complex spectrum management policies and protocols behind them.

During that period I collaborated in several projects within the university that exposed me to the field of space communications. I worked for several months as the System Integrator of the ³Cat project directed by Professors Eduard Alarcon and Adriano Camps. The goal of the ³Cat project was to build and launch a CubeSat with educational and technology demonstration purposes. In addition, I participated in the Android Beyond the Stratosphere (ABS) project, funded with a Google Research Award, that studies the viability of designing low-cost satellites using commercial off the shelf components found inside a mobile phone. Finally, I also had a taste of the industry world as a result of two summer internships in two big multinationals in Germany: Procter&Gamble and GKN Landsystems.

I wrote my undergraduate thesis in the System Architecture Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Edward Crawley and Dr. Bruce Cameron. During my thesis I developed computational tools to model the space communications network of NASA in order to explore different architectures for their future space-based network. After my 11 months stay I realized that I really enjoyed the research that we were conducting in the lab and that I wanted to continue it by pursing a PhD in System Architecture with a special focus on Space Communications. I was admitted to the program in 2015 and I have been working towards my degree since then.

Thanks for your visit!