Gara Villalba is full professor of the Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and researcher at the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence (CEX2019-000940-M) ICTA-UAB. Her bachelor’s degree is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998), and her PhD from the University of Barcelona (2003), both in chemical engineering. She was recently awarded an ERC Consolidator grant URBAG: Integrated System Analysis of Urban Vegetation and Agriculture (2019-2024, urbag.eu), from Horizon 2020 of the European Commission. She is also a recipient of ICREA Academia 2021.