Dr. José Aznar-Moreno (JA) completed his doctoral degree in Chemistry from the University of Sevilla, at Instituto de la Grasa (CSIC) in the Department of Physiology and Technology of Plant Products (2009-2013) under the FPI program. During this time, JA completed two rotations at prestigious research centers; 1) University of Guelph (Canada) at Dr. Mullen’s lab and 2) University of Hong Kong (China) in Dr. Chye’s lab. This experience led to several collaborations that resulted in eight peer-reviewed publications under two nationals (MICINN AGL2008-01086/ALI and AGL2011-23187/ALI) and one international (2011HK0008) projects.

     Upon completing his PhD, JA was awarded with a highly competitive Canadian fellowship (Mitacs) which it was rejected to accept a post-doctoral research position at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Washington State University (USA), under the direction of distinguished Prof. John Browse (2014-2015) and supported by Bayer CropScience working on the project “Optimizing the Fatty Acid Composition of Seed Oils”. Through his research efforts, he successfully developed and screened a TILLING population to identify and characterize several oil specific genes. The results of this research have been published in Journal of Experimental Botany. After that, JA was employed as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Dr. Timothy Durrett (2015-2018), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Kansas State University (USA).  As part of his research, he was leading the development of a CRISPR-Cas9 genetic modification system in Camelina sativa under the projects "Targeted engineering of Camelina seed biochemistry to synthesize valuable oleochemical Feedstocks" and “Optimization and Production of acetyl-triacylglycerols for use as fuel, lubricants and specialty chemicals”. The results of his research have been published in Plant and Cell Physiology, Plant Science and ISB News Report. Through the use of traditional plant breeding techniques along with a TILLING population and QTL analysis, he was also working on germplasm development for enhanced oil quality in soybean and in the emerging oilseed crop camelina sativa under the projects “Biofuels in the Arid West: Germplasm Development for sustainable Production of camelina Oilseed” and “Blocking Production of Non-metabolizable Carbohydrate by Enhancing Stable Oil Levels in Developing Soybean Seeds”. Some of these results have been published in Plant Physiology, Industrial Crop and Product, Metabolites and Frontiers in Plant Science. Moreover, some knowledges are patented (WO2022076538).

     After that, he was awarded with a “Juan de la Cierva incorporación” (2019-2021) working at Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas (CBGP-UPM) in Dr. Rubio’s lab under the project “BFN Cereals Phase II” funded by the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation. This contract provided 6.000€ for research, training and networking cost and some results have been published in Frontiers in Agronomy and mBio. After that, JA was developing a research project as Co-PI under a Marie Curie fellowship (MSCA-IF-2019, 172.932€.) with Dr. Botella at the IHSM-UMA-CSIC (Málaga, Spain) working on the project “Plant Lipids Signallinig Under Drought and Salt Stresses”. After all this experience, JA has incorporated to the Instituto de la Grasa (CSIC) under the Emergia program (Junta de Andalucía) which support his salary and provide funding to open his own research group (256.534€). Currently, he got funding from AEI (Agencia Estatal Investigación, 136.500€) to develop another project (Generación de conocimiento 2022) incorporate in the GBBLS’s group.