Fernando Martinez-Garcia (Ferran) earned a BSc in Biological Science (Biochemistry) at the Universitat de València (UV), where he also completed his PhD studies in 1988 with a doctoral thesis dealing with comparate neuroanatomy (with the reptile brain). After spending predoctoral stays at the Universidad del Pais Vasco and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, he joined the faculty of Biological Sciences of the UV as a professor, where he founded the Lab for Functional and Comparate Neuroanatomy, in order to investigate in the context of comparate neuroscience and behaviour. In 2014, he joined the Predepartmental Unit of Medicine in the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) where he teaches histology within Medicine degree and Neuroscience of Maternal Behaviour within the Master’s Programme for Research on Brain and Behaviour. Currently, he has refunded his lab at the UJI (Lab for Functional Neuroanatomy, NeuroFun, group 278), where he aims at investigating the neuroendocrine substrates of maternal behaviour.

He has directed 10 PhD theses and several research works and master’s and bachelor’s thesis. He has also occupied a number of academic positions, in the UV as well as the UJI, where he currently is Vicedean (in charge of academic organisation) and director of the developing PhD Programme for Biomedical and Health Sciences.
Regarding all these tasks, he has been able to publish some eighty scientific papers in international journals, as well as several book chapters for prestigious international publishers. His scientific production can be found here:

He considers himself to be committed to teaching and to his student, and he believes in his profession because he is sure that his students will do great things in their personal and professional lives. He also loves traveling, reading, writing, music, cinema (when there’s time left) and sport, especially running and mountain bike.

Cinta Navarro Moreno completed her bachelor degrees on Biological Sciences at the University of Valencia and on Environmental Science at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. After working with phytoplankton communities at the Water Engineering and Environment Institute of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, she joined a scientific expedition to Yasuni in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Recently she received her Master’s degree on Basic and Applied Neuroscience at the University of Valencia. Cinta is currently PhD student in functional neuroanatomy in the NeuroFun group of the Jaume I University.

She’s a big consumer of science fiction and humor in almost all its formats. She combines these two passions in the co-direction of the renowned webseries “Roboberto y Alejandroide”, a faithful audiovisual story of positronic costumbrism. She sporadically writes, draws and participates in absurd debates in bars.

Manuela Barneo Muñoz read her bachelor degree in Biology and her master degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Genetics in the University of Valencia. The studies for her PhD degree were done the "Instituto Valenciano de Biomedicina" (IBV-CSIC, València), the "Centro Investigación Principe Felipe" (CIPF, València) and the Babraham Institute (Cambridge, United Kingdom). During all these years as a student collaborator, master-student, PhD student and now as a PhD, she has handled several organisms as a subject of study: yeast, Lepidoptera, trees, and, for the most part in mice. In addition, the variety of laboratories which has worked for (Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias, Biochemistry Genetics and Biotechnology laboratory in the Department of Genetics, Functional Genomics of yeasts laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and the laboratories where she was doing her doctoral thesis) have allowed her for learning a lot of techniques. In the present, she is still learning in the Functional Neurobiology laboratory of the Jaume I University and she is doing it with the same enthusiasm as her first time in a laboratory.
Moreover, Manuela likes to break away in her town, Beas de Segura (Jaén), where she is able to have time for a "good life".

Maria Bellés Esteller completed her Bachelor degree in Biological Sciences in 2011 at the Universitat de Valencia (UV), and straightaway, in 2012 she finished her Master degree in Basic and Applied Neuroscience in the same institution. Presently, she is about to finish her PhD in neuroscience at the UV, in the cell biology department, where she is studying the immature neurons of the layer II of the piriform cortex. During her PhD period, she had the pleasure to did several stays abroad in Salzburg, in the Paracelsus Medical University. Currently, she is working in the NeuroFun group of the Jaume I University (UJI) in Castelló, in which she is delighted with learning about a whole load of things, including maternal behavior. In her free time, Maria loves travelling, going hiking and diving, which is one of her passions.

Enrique Lanuza earned his BSc in Biological Sciences in 1993 in Universitat de València, with an extraordinary best BSc award. He completed his PhD studies in the Department for Animal Biology in Universitat de València and the Department for Anatomy and Cell Biology in the State University of New York, with a scholarship of “La Caixa” Trust (1995-97). His PhD thesis dealt about comparate neurobiology and brain evolution, for which he was granted a Best PhD award in 1998. In 1999, he joins Joseph Ledoux’s lab (Center for Neural Science, New York University) as a Fullbright postdoctoral scholarship holder., where he investigates the neural circuits involved in emotional learning. In january 2000 he joins the department for Cell Biology of Universitat de València, where he is currently Professor. His research is focused on the neural circuits responsable for social and sexual behaviours, such as sexual attraction, agression and maternal behaviour. He has published moret han 50 research papers in scientific journals enclosed in International databases like Web of Science o PubMed, as well as several book chapters for publishers like Springer, Academic Press or Elsevier. He has been Vicedean of the faculty of Biological Sciences and currently he also is coordinator of the Neuroscience Master’s programme of the Universitat de València.

María José Sánchez-Catalán earned her Pharmacy Degree in 2006 and her PhD in Neuroscience in 2011 at the University of Valencia about the neurobiological effects of ethanol and its metabolites, which was granted with the Honorific PhD Degree Award.

During the doctorate period, she completed her training with a research stay in the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim (Germany) (2010). Afterwards, she joined as a postdoctoral researcher the Institute of Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Strasbourg (France) (2012), where she investigated the control of dopaminergic systems. Lecturer at the Medicine Department of the University Jaume I of Castellón (2015-2016) and at the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology and Parasitology of the University of Valencia (2016-2017). In 2017, she worked as a researcher in the Vaccine Research Area of the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research of Valencia Region. Since October 2017, she is Lecturer at the Medicine Department of the University of Jaume I, where she continues her teaching and research career as a member of the Neurofun group. She is specially interested in the role of dopaminergic systems in emotional processes and several neurological diseases.

Sara Carli was born in Portomaggiore (Italy) on 09/09/1991. She graduated in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Tecnlogies at the University of Ferrara (Italy) in March 2016, with the tesis “Optimization of HSV amplicon vector for the long term expression in the CNS”. Currently, she is completing a post – graduated fellowship “Erasmus+ Traineeship” in NeuroFun lab (Spain) from September 2016 to March 2017.

Carmen Agustín Pavón was born in Valencia in 1980. She earned her PhD in 2008 in Universitat de Valencia, where her PhD thesis about the neurochemistry of pheromone-guided sociosexual behaviours was granted the Best PhD Thesis Award. She completed her pre-doctoral training with a stay at Università di Roma La Sapienza (2006). Afterwards, she became postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University (2009-2010), where she investigated the emotional regulation in non-human prinates, with a focus on the role of the prefrontal còrtex. Furthermore, she participated in a project in the Centre de Regulació Genòmica de Barcelona (2011-2013) and the Imperial College London (2014) that aimed to develop a gene therapy for Huntington’s disease, and collaborated with other projects dealing with animal models for neurological diseases. Carmen (re)joined NeuroFun in october 2014, after earning a position as a sènior lecturer at the Medical Science BSc in the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, 2015-2016). Since october 2016, Carmen is sènior lecturer at the faculty of Biological Science in the Universitat de València.
Academic papers and citations in ScholarGoogle:
https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=62ulV-gAAAAJ&hl=es
Researcher profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carmen_Agustin-Pavon
Aside from her research activity, Carmen is devoted to scientific communication since she won in 2011 the El.lipse Award for Scientific Communication (Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona). She is a blogger at scientific platforms such as Naukas and Scilogs and she has published papers in a number of journals (Redes, Mente y Cerebro, Historia y Vida,...). She has also organized or given talks at high schools, scientific cafés and other scientific communication events.
Twitter: @CarmenAgustin
Blogs:
http://www.investigacionyciencia.es/blogs/psicologia-y-neurociencia/30/posts
http://naukas.com/autor/carmenpavon/

Hugo Salais López was born in Valencia in 1987. He earned a Bachelor degree in Biological Sciences in 2011, followed by a Master degree in Basic and Applied Neuroscience in 2012, both at the Universitat de València (UV). He is currently finishing his PhD in neuroscience at the UV and Universitat Jaume I (UJI), where he studies the neuroendocrinological adaptations carried out by prolactin on the maternal brain and the role of this hormone in the regulation of maternal behaviour. During his PhD, he also spent a stay in Dr. Oliver Bosch’s lab at the Universität Regensburg (UR) in Germany, where he studied the role of corticotropin-releasing factor in the neuroendocrine regulation of maternal behaviour in rats.
Research profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hugo_Salais-Lopez
In addition to his research career, Hugo is currently establishing as a scientific illustrator. He has illustrated several covers for scientific journal such as Frontiers in Neuroanatomy and Hormones and Behaviour, as well as a number of research papers in- and out of the field of neuroscience. Hugo’s illustration works can be checked here: https://www.facebook.com/hsilustration

María Abellán Álvaro was born in Valencia in 1991. She finished her degree in Biology in 2013 at the Universitat de València, and her Master degree at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2014. Her Master thesis was carried out in the Dr. Antonio Armario and Roser Nadal laboratory, where she studied how emotional stressing stimuli are processed in the prefrontal cortex in rats. Then, she started collaborating in this research group with Dr. Enrique Lanuza, where she continued with the study of the efferences and afferences of the cortex-amygdala transition zone and corticoamygdaloid nucleus. After that, she started to study the genetic changes which take place in the medial amygdala of dams for her PhD thesis.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Ab
On the other hand, in her free time she tries to collaborate as volunteer in different kinds of field work. She has worked with some wildlife centres like AMUS and La Granja del Saler and sampling different kinds of wildlife populations.