Dr. María Pilar Llanes Estrada is a full professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she teaches Geophysics, Geophysical Prospecting and Geophysical Techniques, to graduate and undergraduate students. She specializes in Geophysics, Tectonics and marine geomorphology, and she focuses her research on characterizing marine geological structures and morphological processes and their impacts on the assessments of landslide, tsunami and earthquake hazards. She has carried out her work in geological settings including intraplate volcanic islands, volcanic arcs, subduction zones and continental margins. She earned her PhD at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has conducted long- and short-term research in various prestigious centers for marine geology and geophysics: the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the USGS Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, SOEST at the University of Hawaii, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and CICIMAR (La Paz, México). She has participated in 14 oceanographic surveys, acquiring, processing and interpreting geophysical data across a range of geographies including Spain, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea. Her participation in ten research projects have resulted in 16 papers published in indexed journals, 54 conferences contributions, the cartography of the northeastern Caribbean region (USGS Open-file report) and the cartography of the Spanish Economic Exclusive Zone (Monographic Series) in the Balear Sea and in the Canary Islands. Her interest in sharing science with the public has led her to publish several popular press articles, and she was awarded with the Best Science Outreach article at the UCM in 2009. Also, to disseminate her groups scientific results she has participated in four documentary films, and she obtained the financial support to produce one of them which she also went on to direct. She served as the academic secretary at the 1st International Conference on Science Outreach at the UCM. She was elected a member of the committee to judge the Excellence in Geophysical Education Award of the American Geophysical Union from 2008 to 2009, and she regularly reviews papers in five prestigious,
indexed journals.