Montserrat Villar has a PhD in Astrophysics. Her specialty is active galaxies, those that host a supermassive black hole with signs of frenetic activity. She spent here PhD thesis period at the Europen Southern Observatory (ESO, Garching, Alemania, 1996). She continued with with two postdoctoral stays at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Sheffield University (UK) and the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (France). She went back to the UK in the year 2000 as a staff lecturer at the Department of Natural Siences of the University of Hertfordshire. She returned to Spain in 2003 with a Ramón y Cajal contract at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). In 2007 se became permanent CSIC staff. Since 2011 she works at the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA). She has more than 100 publications related to her research. Besides, she has a long experience in science outreach, an area in which she has both coordinated and participated in a great diversity of initiatives. Among the most recent ones, the creation and coordination of the project “Cultura con C de Cosmos” (culturaccosmos.es) stands out.

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