Prof. Aitziber Cortajarena earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Universidad del País Vasco in 2002. Then, she worked on protein design in the group of Dr. Lynne Regan at Yale University, USA, as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate Research Scientist. She joined IMDEA Nanociencia in 2010 and started her independent research in nanobiotechnology. In 2016, she joined CIC biomaGUNE as Ikerbasque Research Professor. Currently, she leads the Biomolecular Nanotechnology group and is Scientific Director at CIC biomaGUNE since 2022.

She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in internationally recognized journals, which have been cited over 4,000 times, 6 invited reviews, 2 edited books, and 5 granted patents. She has presented her work at over 50 internationally recognized conferences.  

Her work has been recognized by the Horizon Prize from The Royal Society of Chemistry, the Research Excellence Award from The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Women in Science Career Award from Ikerbasque. In 2023, she has been elected member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Science.

She has been Associate Editor of ACS Applied Biomaterials, ACS Publications, and currently is Senior Editor at Protein Science, Wiley.  

She is the vice president of the Spanish Biophysical Society, Secretary of the Chemical Biology Group form the RSEQ, member of the Executive Council of the European Biophysical Society, and Past-Member of the International Protein Society Council.

Prof. Cortajarena has obtained numerous European projects, including an ERC Consolidator Grant (ProNANO), two ERC-PoC (NIMM, NanoImaging), an ERA-CoBioTech (coordinator), four FET-Open projects, one coordinated (e-Prot, ARTIBLED, FairyLights, DeDNAed), and one EIC Pathfinder project (iSenseDNA), which cover from the fundamental development of protein-based tools to the validation of biomolecule-based technologies in biomedical and technological applications.