In October 1990 I joined the Computer Architecture and Operating Systems Department of  the UAB as a postgraduate student. In 2000, I did my PhD dissertation at UAB in the topic of load balancing in parallel systems. This research resulted 11 publications in international conferences and 5 papers in indexed journals.

After presenting my PhD Thesis, I did a one-year postdoctoral stay at the University of Madison - Wisconsin (USA). During this stay, I collaborated with the groups of Professors Miron Livny and Barton Miller. The result of this collaboration was published in 2 prestigious international conferences.

At the end of this stay, I gave a turn to the projection of my career as a researcher by starting to co-lead a research group, becoming independent from my doctoral thesis director. This new research line was focused on  the application of high performance computing in environmental challenges related to simulating the spread of forest fires. The objective of this research covered several aspects: from reducing the prediction time (simulation) to be able to provide the extinction services with an early response, to the use of massive parallel computing to improve the quality of the prediction by means of adjustment procedures of the input parameters with genetic algorithms and reduce the uncertainty associated with them. The experience acquired in this environmental challenge made it possible to expand the scope of the research line to other environmental challenges such as, on the one hand, ocean simulation with the aim of analyzing the effect of climate change on the oceans and, on the other hand, simulations of air quality in urban areas in order to analyze the effect of the inclusion of green infrastructures in these zones.

This research line is an interdisciplinary one, which has required the group to collaborate with researchers from other fields of science. The results of the coordination of this new line of research have been:

- 15 PhD Thesis (10 under my supervision and 2 in progress also under my supervision)

- 30 publications in indexed international journals

- more than 80 publications in international conferences

- Participation in 2 projects of the European Commission

- Principal Investigator of one project of the European Commission

- Principal Investigator in 2 national projects

- Researcher Responsible for 3 knowledge transfer agreements

Number of six-year research terms granted: 4
Last six-year research term granted: 2011-2016
 
Scopus Indexes:
H: 14
Total citations: 714
Average cites/year (last 5 years): 67.8

WoS Indexes:

H: 12
Total citations: 540
Average cites/year (last 5 years): 53
 
PhD Thesis advised during the last 10 years: 6 PhD Thesis, 5 with European/International Mention and 2 were awarded with the Extraordinary Doctorate award. Currently 2 PhD Thesis in progress.
 
PhD student: Vidal Canedo, Veronica; WFR-Chem optimization in HPC platforms to determine the effect of Green infrastructures on air quality.   
Start date: 01/10/2019                    Dissertation date (expected): July 2023
PhD student: Pereira Fraga, Edigley; Efficient Cloud Resource Management for Forest Fire Prediction Environment
Start date: 02/10/2017                    Dissertation date (expected): July 2021
PhD student: Farguell Caus, Àngel; Modeling Wildland Fire Behaviour using a Multi-Physics System on HPC Platforms.   PhD Thesis with International mention
Start date: 02/11/2015                    Dissertation date: 13/12/2018
PhD student: Tintó Prims, Oriol; NEMO: Computational Challenges in Ocean Simulation. PhD Thesis with International mention
Start date: 03/11/2014                    Dissertation date: 14/10/2019
PhD student: Artés Vivancos, Tomas; Multi-core Hybrid Architectures Applied to Forest Fire Spread Prediction. PhD Thesis with International mention  and Extraordinary Doctorate award
Start date: 17/12/2012                    Dissertation date: 08/09/2015
PhD student: Hisham W. Y. Ihshaish; Genetic Ensemble (G-Ensemble): An Evolutionary Computing Technique for Numerical Weather Prediction Enhancement
Start date: 31/10/2007                    Dissertation date: 12/09/2012
PhD student: Andrés Cencerrado Barraqué; Methodology for Time Response and Quality Assessment in Natural Hazards Evolution Prediction. PhD Thesis with European mention and Extraordinary Doctorate award
Start date: 27/11/2009                    Dissertation date: 17/07/2012
PhD student: Petra Kerstin Wendt; On the Use of Evolutionary Intelligent Systems to Calibrate Input Parameters in Forest Fire Spread Prediction. PhD Thesis with European mention.
Start date:  11/12/2008                   Dissertation date: 20/01/2012

Publications (last 10 years) first quartile (Q1): 6
4 indexed in JCR-Thomson Reuters and 2 indexed in Scimago Index.
Publications (last 10 years) second quartile JCR-Thomson Reuters (Q2): 12
Publications (last 10 years) third quartile JCR-Thomson Reuters (Q3): 3

Program Committee

Organizing Committee: ICCS Workshop on Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems 2013, 2014; ICCS Workshop on Solving Problems with Uncertainties de 2013 hasta 2020; ICCS Workshop on Data Driven Computational Science, de 2015 hasta 2020

Program Committee: ICCS; HPCS; ICA3PP; ICCSA

Indexed journals reviewer:
Environmental Modeling & Software, Journal of Computational Science, Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, Simulation Modelling Practice and Experience, Combustion Theory and Modelling
 
Research evaluation activity:
ANEP's project evaluator including the Ramon y Cajal program, AGAUR's project evaluator and evaluator of the Academia program of ANECA.
 
Available accreditations:

ACREDITACIÓ DE RECERCA AVANÇADA issued by AQUSUC (Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya) for the contractual position of CATEDRÁTICO CONTRATADO (contracted Professor). March 2017.

ACREDITACIÓN NACIONAL (Spanish national accreditation) for the position of CATEDRÁTICOS DE UNIVERSIDAD (Professor) June 2015.